an art that's hard to teach
by midnightluck
Summary: Ace hasn't stolen anything in years, not really, when the rumors of Pandora surface. He makes a decision and several mistakes, and is still surprised when his past catches up to him in the form of a too-small ghost. (The canon au DCMK fusion where Ace steals, Sabo haunts him, the Whitebeards are entertained and alarmed, and the author cares far too much about stage magic)
1. prologue

_This was my entry for the 2019 OP Big Bang. It's more or less a DCMK fusion, and it is the longest thing I have ever written on purpose. It is a mess and needs editing, and one day I will have enough distance to do that. The magic is all real and accurate, to the best of my 10+ years of magic experience. Thank you to everyone who helped me get this far. Chapter titles are from "gonna go far kid" by the Offspring.  
_

_ Enjoy!_

* * *

_Once upon a time, on an island far away..._

"Ugh," Sabo says, letting the book fall to cover his face. "I'm so done with these detective stories."

Ace hums, only half paying attention. The elastic on his favorite pull is coming loose and that's far more important.

"It's so stupid. Devil fruits are the dumbest plot device," Sabo tells him anyway, and then continues with a sing-song mockery, "Oooh, it wasn't a machine that crushed him but this character who ate a devil fruit and is a Crush Crush human and you should've known because he said he didn't like baths!"

"Uh huh," Ace says, squinting. The elastic isn't fraying, the glue is nearly dry, and it should be all fixed. He snaps it into place on his belt and then looks up and yells, "Hey Luffy!"

Luffy pops his head in from up on the deck, and he hangs upside down to look at Ace, a piece of jerky hanging out of his mouth.  
"C'mere," Ace says, gesturing, and swivels around to put put both Sabo and Luffy in front of him, palming the pull. "Check it out. Sabo, toss me that-no, the _other_ that-yeah, that that. Thanks."

He grabs the gaudy glass jewel out of the air and displays it with a flourish. A pass, a sleight, a French drop, and the pull retracts just like it should, silent and quick. He twists both hands outward to show them both empty.

Sabo's watching with narrowed eyes and his gaze darts from hand to hand to pocket to shirt, and Ace grins back at him. He frowns and says, "You have patter with that, right?"

"Wahhh!" Luffy's already bouncing in his personal space, grabbing both hands and turning them over and over. "Hey! Where'd it go! How'd you do that!"

"Ah, now," Ace says, and reaches up to tug at Luffy's hat. "It's a mystery!"


	2. a thousand lies and a good disguise

Ace is walking the deck on his night shift when he catches the word "gem" and circles back around out of pure habit. "Gem?" he says, intruding on the gaggle of crewmen with all the subtlety of an avalanche.

"Yeah," Haruta says, popping up from nowhere to lean across Jimnez's shoulders. "Jimnez here was just telling us the most fascinating story about our next stop, weren't you, Jimnez?"

"Er," Jimnez says, leaning forward, away from Haruta. "I was? I mean—"

"Our next stop?" Ace asks.

"Yeah, 'parently the next island has some kind of massive rock display or something, and one of the gems is magical?"

"I—" Jimnez starts, then tries, "It—it's just a story."

"Stories are never just stories on the Grand Line," Haruta says, and takes a step back to stop scaring the poor man silly.

"Especially stories about magic gems," Ace agrees, and settles himself onto the deck in a tailor seat with the other crewmen who'd been listening to scary stories. "Magic gems are everywhere. You wouldn't believe how many there are, ugh."

"Know a lot about magic gems?" Haruta asks, slithering out of the shadows next to Ace and flopping sideways across his lap.

"You'd be surprised," Ace says, and they both turn intent eyes back to Crewman Jimnez, who clearly cannot handle two Commanders casually joining story time.

"I—uh. Okay, yeah, uh, magic gem," he says, stuttering, and Ace makes a humming noise of interest and plants both elbows on Haruta to better lean in. Jimnez blinks at them, then takes a deep breath, pointedly sticks his eyes to a barrel to the side. "The legend says there's a gem in the darkest pit in the deepest hole under the tallest mountain," he says, and once he's started, the words flow smoother.

"They say the gem is lonely, and that it weeps tears of the brightest liquid diamond. They say it was a woman, before it was a rock, and this is the story of her."

And he tells the story, clearly from memory, of a woman whose lover was sick, and she sought out legends and magics and herbs that might cure him, and when she returned with a vial of mermaid's tears, she was betrayed and he was dead and every awful thing had happened.

"She climbed the tallest mountain," Jimnez says, bringing the story to a close. "She wanted to ask the gods why, but there was no answer—there's never any answer. So she threw herself on their mercy instead, and fell and fell right down into the darkest part of the underground. But the gods are at their cruelest when trying to be kind, and they saved her life by turning her into a stone that could survive even the longest fall. So she lays there now, still, and she cries mermaid tears that will bring eternal life to anyone unlucky enough to find her."

He clasps his hands in front of himself and for a moment there's no sound but the whistle of wind, the creak of the ship, and the neverending waves. Then Haruta ruins the moment utterly by saying, "That's a good story, Jimnez."

He promptly flushes and rocks back on his heels. "Uh, it's a classic. From my village, that is. The grandmas use it as a warning to—to the kids, and…"

Haruta sits up, stretching a bit, and says, with narrow eyes, "What was the woman's name?"

"I—I don't know; it was never part of the story—"

"Pandora," Ace says, mouth set and eyes far away.

Jimnez startles and Haruta turns to look at him, and he continues in an absent kind of way, "There's a lot of magic gems, but only one who cries tears of immortality under the full moon, and that's Pandora."

Haruta turns to Jimnez, who shrugs hastily and says, "If—if you say so, sir?"

Ace blinks, coming back to himself, and he grins, large and dark and wild. It's a grin he hasn't worn since forever ago, but it's still as at home on his face as it ever was. "I told you," he says mildly, "You'd be surprised what I know about magic gems."

The group splits up after that and Ace gets up to finish his patrol, and if his hands twitch for journals that no longer exist, well, that's for him to know. He fishes a coin out of his pocket to fiddle with instead, walking it across his fingers and palming it absently.

He shouldn't, he knows he shouldn't. It's a bad idea, in every single way. He hasn't got anything but his most basic supplies and his cape; he hasn't even got a mask or a hat.

It's a bad idea. He flips the coin up and catches it, nodding.

It's a _really _bad idea.

He's gonna do it anyway.

There's still plenty of time 'til dawn, and he never doesn't have lock picks on him; there's a set in his bag and some in the side seams of his shorts and more in his hat band and a handful in his boots—there's no such thing as too many contingencies, after all.

He raids Fossa's workroom first, then the stores for gunpowder and saltpeter, and then, just after the change of watch, Izo's extended closet. He dips into the Command Center to be sure Haruta is there, and then breaks into the Commander's cabin in search of certain prank supplies. None of what's there is quite right, but it's close enough.

He detours through the main hall and dips into the game supplies to grab a handful of decks from the incomplete deck box, ducks the early morning chefs to snitch sugar and a dozen eggs, and ends up perched on the back of the forecastle, around back of the ship, where there's a decorative strut exactly the right size for a teenager to straddle.

He found it during his early days aboard; it's convenient for midday naps or plotting murder sprees. It's not really perfect for making props, but Ace is very good at making do.

He uses a lockpick to pierce the eggs for blowing and experiments with a tin mug and his own heat to find the right temperature for mixing three parts saltpeter to two parts sugar. He didn't grab any coloring agents, so white will have to do.

He lets the brown caramelized sludge cool for a minute, scaling a handful of cards to get back in practice, before realizing he can draw the heat out himself, and he's already digging for fabric to shred for fuses before realizing he probably doesn't need them anymore, not when he can control a spark at a distance.

Two of the eggshells break irreparably but he comes out of the morning with a solid handful of homemade smoke bombs, so it's no real loss.

He passes the next few hours out there, working on all the accoutrements he used to have pre-made and fashioning up a mask from a black necktie he'd grabbed from the lost and found. Sewing isn't his preferred craft, but he's not bad at it; no one who sews as many hidden pockets into their wardrobe as Ace does can be _bad _at sewing.

He ends up falling asleep at some point and doesn't mind; he'll have to take more midday naps starting now to ensure he's adjusted if he's gonna start going out at night again.

Still, it's been a long—if successful—day of prepping, and he's hungry. The smoke bombs go in his side pocket, the tools back in their various hidey-holes, and the rest of the props get shoved into a small pouch fashioned from a handkerchief and fabric scraps. He's not careful when he scrambles back up the ship and over to the deck; his stuff is made to keep up.

He still heads back to his cabin first, dropping off anything incriminating and redistributing cards, coins, and cloth into something more practical. He keeps two smoke bombs and the rest go with his new kit, up high, attached to the ceiling in the shadow of a roof beam.

People, Ace knows, so rarely look up.

His fingers find a packet of cards in his pocket as he heads towards food, and he's absently going through a one-handed warm-up routine when he hits the galley. He takes a top break, palms one card, and drops the rest back in a pocket before pushing open the door.

It's too late for lunch but not quite dinner, and the galley is not quite empty but definitely not crowded. Ace meanders over to the serving bar and leans against it, idly moving the card from a front palm to a back. "Hey," he says, leaning in to catch Thatch's attention. "What's a guy gotta do to get something to eat around here?"

"Ask nicely," Thatch retorts, but he's already pulling out a tray and several plates. "Where've you been all day, anyway? You missed lunch."

"Took a nap."

"All day?"

Ace shrugs, stretches, and says, "It's good weather for napping."

Thatch huffs at him but hands over the tray anyway, and Ace slips the last card in his pocket before accepting it. "Thanks," he says, grinning brightly.

Thatch points at him and says, "You owe me one," before waving him off.

Ace accepts this as his due and jerks his head, inviting Thatch to come join him. Thatch huffs but washes his hands, tosses the towel over his shoulder, and follows Ace across the galley to a table by the wall.

"We're making land tomorrow, right?" Ace says, and then starts eating.

Thatch makes a face at him but takes his cue. "Yeah. Looks like we'll be there three days, I think; I know I wanna resupply on some things, and there's some kinda museum something that's got Izo all aflutter. Haruta is apparently uninterested in the island, but in that specific Haruta way that means we better watch out for explosions, you know?"

Ace hums through a mouthful of food and Thatch grimaces at him. "Some of us are meeting up after second shift to go see the rocks like Izo wants and then hang out."

Ace swallows, gulps down a cup of water, and finally says, "You mean drink all night?"

"That's what I said, isn't it?" Thatch says. "Anyway, we're meeting at the dock if you wanna come."

"Yeah, probably," Ace says, accepting this bit of good luck. "I got some errands to run, too; we'll see."

"Errands?" Thatch repeats, raising his eyebrows. "What errands? You don't run errands."

"I do too!"

"Ace, the last time we gave you a shopping list, you went a killed a wild boar instead."

"The list said meat! I got you meat!"

"You don't run errands," Thatch repeats. "So what are you up to?"

Ace thinks about it for a second, then says, "You probably don't wanna know. Plausible deniability and all that. Haruta's hard to lie to."

Thatch recoils from the table and stands up. "You leave me out of this," he says, waving an arm wildly at Ace. "I'm not getting between you two again! You guys play dirty!"

"I'm _trying _to leave you out of this; you keep butting in."

Thatch heads back to the kitchen, waving absently over his shoulder and mumbling, and Ace finishes his meal. If he hurries, he may have just enough time to squeeze in some much-needed practice before they dock.

* * *

Ace doesn't leave the ship when they first arrive. He's got responsibilities, these days, and he's still mildly baffled about that.

Luckily, he also has a really good lieutenant who does most everything for him. Jack's already waiting for him with the leave rotation when he wanders out on deck to look the island over, and he accepts it for a quick review.

He's got no idea how Jack manages to keep everyone and everything straight, but it's all there in black and white and bad handwriting. "Yeah," he says, then, "Wait, no—Alise and Shiki are fighting again; switch one of them with Hirato on nights, yeah?"

Jack gives him a wry grin. "Gotcha, Commander," he says, heading back towards the cabin. "Have fun!"

"I'll be around if you need me!" Ace hollers back, already halfway down the deck. He'd usually stick around a bit longer, but he's got shopping to do.

He rides over to the dock on one of the many landing boats that's going back and forth; no need to call attention to himself by flying and no point in mooring the Striker for a minute's ride. The landing boat isn't the fastest, but it's far from uncomfortable.

His first stop, once ashore, is to follow the crowds until he finds a shopping area, then follow his nose to a food vendor. He ends up in front of a cart that's selling some kind of cooked grain that's dry, fluffy, and crunches satisfyingly.

He gets three bags of it, tucks two into his pockets, and starts wandering.

There's some asshole being all lordly to some poor shopkeeper, and Ace detours to brush past him just 'cause he can. Why spend his own money when he can spend an asshole's instead?

Then he gets started on his list now, before Izo goes off shift and comes on shore; there's no need to tempt fate by going into a clothing store while Izo is within five miles.

Then again, Izo prefers bespoke clothes and high fashion, not second-hand stores like the one Ace finds. It's not ideal, but right now he needs practical more than perfect. Besides, it's just this one time; not like he needs to pour money into something he'll never use again.

He finds black trousers two sizes too big, which will have to do. The only shirt the right color in anything approaching the right size is a satin women's blouse that's just a hair too small; the darts will make it gape weirdly in the front, but Ace dives into the ties and handkerchief section and finds something that's more a jabot than a cravat. It'll look dumb, like a napkin, and he closes his eyes for a quick second to let the old rage boil through him before he clutches it tight.

Besides, there's a vest that's pretty much perfect. It's a bit big but the adjustable strap across the back cinches it well enough to hide most of the shirt. He gathers his collection and takes it to the register; it's not perfect and it'll look very weird on close inspection, but no one will be inspecting him closely, so that's okay.

The lady at the counter folds everything together for him into a flimsy bag, and he grins at her, bright and wide. A bag, that's what he needs. A trunk would be ideal, but he's never gonna find a magician's trunk just by luck, so a bag it is.

But that's for later; he's out of time. Ace needs to show up at the docks in the next twenty minutes or Thatch and the others will notice, and he needs to not have this bag with him or it will be stolen from him and gone through. There's nothing incriminating in the bag—_ yet _—but preparation and paranoia head off a lot of bad luck.

So he takes the high road, over the roofs, half for the speed and half for the thrill. Besides, it's good to know the area; never know when you'll be chased through the town by screaming mobs and all that.

He clears an alley just on the outskirts of the dock area, landing on the next roof, and he twists with his hips and throws his shoulders back as counterbalance, flipping his body over and landing mostly horizontal but with momentum. He scrabbles forward, grabs the edge of the roof, and flips feet over head to drop straight down.

There's a shout as he lands, bending deep at the knee to absorb the impact. "Sup," he says, standing and giving a sharp wave.

A deep sigh he knows only too well is followed by, "Captain, _please _—"

"Not your captain anymore," Ace reminds Masked Deuce.

"You may not be _the _Captain but you will always be _my _Captain," Masked Deuce tells him sourly, rubbing at his temple.

"Well, that's a bad decision," Ace says cheerfully.

"Trust me, I _know _," his former first mate says. "I'm just glad we've found even more idiots willing to watch over you."

"Yeah, yeah," Ace says, waving it away. "Hey, I need a favor."

"Does it involve arson—"

"No, it's—"

"—or murder—"

"What? No!"

"—or pissing off large amounts of powerful people?"

"No! I was just hoping you'd take this bag back to the ship for me!"

Masked Deuce regards him skeptically. "Will it explode—"

"_ No _, it won't explode! Your lack of faith in me is painful, geeze."

"My lack of faith is warranted and you know it." He eyes the bag Ace is holding out suspiciously but reaches for it.

"It's a surprise, is all," Ace says. "You know how Emmeline's birthday is coming up? I just don't want the surprise ruined. If the other Commanders see me carrying a bag…"

All of these sentences, individually, are true. Ace doesn't like to outright lie, but he's got years of training in presenting things in exactly the wrong way.

He'll just have to remember to get Emmeline an actual present later. She likes sparkly things and books, right?

"You remembered Emmeline's birthday?" Masked Deuce asks, taking the bag.

"Of course," Ace says, half insulted, half confused. "Have I ever forgotten any of your birthdays?"

"Only your own. But things have changed, this year, is all, and we thought maybe…"

"We're having a party," Ace says abruptly. "Just us, the ex-Spades, for old times' sake. I don't know when, but we'll do something, okay?"

Masked Deuce's eyes catch on his as his fingers catch on the bag. "Yeah," he says. "That—that sounds good."

"Yeah," Ace says, and nods. "Yeah, okay. Thanks."

"Yeah," Masked Deuce says, and steps out of the alley with the bag.

Ace stretches his arms up over his head; he hasn't done flips 'n shit for a while and he always forgets to stretch out his arms ahead of time. He's not late, though, and that's more than worth it.

Thatch is there, with Vista, Jozu, and Izo, and Ace grins, comfortable in his forethought. "Hey," he says, scaring half of them.

"Don't scare the nice pirates," Haruta says from right behind him, making him jump himself, and everyone laughs at him.

"Not fair," Ace says, crossing his arms and pouting because it's expected of him, and he laughs easy enough at the next joke and follows along as the group rolls out.

The museum is right off the square Ace was in earlier, and as they walk he pulls out the bags of snacks he'd gotten earlier. He tosses one to Thatch to be offered around and starts in on the second.

Thatch starts discussing the type of grain and preparation methods and potential uses, and everyone ignores him except Ace who makes appropriate noises through his mouthfuls of food.

There's an entrance fee to the museum. Ace knows this because there's a big sign about it that they all ignore. The receptionist calls after them so Ace makes sure his tattooed back is firmly in her sight and waves over his shoulder, yelling back, "Thanks!"

There's a lot to be said for a good—or more properly, _bad _—reputation, and she doesn't follow them.

The museum itself isn't that big; the gem display is front and center in the big hall and it takes up maybe a third of the space. There's some cool large signs, though, talking about what's on display. Ace shoves his hands in his pockets, turns his eyes upwards, and follows Haruta around.

"This is so cool," Haruta says soon enough, leaning over a case, and Ace agrees, eyes scanning the ceiling. He frowns, eyes sliding down to scan the exhibit hall. "Look, look! It's the gem Jimnez was telling us about!"

Ace's head snaps around, "Pandora?" he says, leaning in.

The gem is large, a smooth stone that glimmers like gold, set in oranges and reflecting back yellows. He frowns, leaning in. "I've never seen a fire opal that big."

"The sign says it's a tourmaline—" Haruta starts but Ace makes a rude noise.

"You don't cut tourmalines cabochon," he says. "Just cause no one's ever seen a fire opal this big doesn't mean it ain't one. 'Sides, tourmalines have veins; this has flecks. Check out that color play."

"Huh," Haruta says, and Ace glances up to find Haruta's eyes on him, not the stone. "You really do know a lot about gems."

"Told you," he says, straightening up and sliding his hands into his pockets to hide his itching fingers. "You'd be surprised."

He follows the others around through the rest of the hall; letting his eyes and mind wander. He skims some of the plaques but none of them come anywhere close to grabbing his attention, and the only other thing he marks is a beautiful set of citrine earrings the exact shade of Emmeline's eyes.

* * *

"What," Thatch says, slamming a hand down on the table, "did you _do?" _

Ace startles himself awake and blinks up at Thatch, ready with a number of defenses and alibis, but—

"Nothing!" Haruta yelps. "I haven't done anything ever!"

Ace shuts his mouth and lets his shoulders slouch a bit.

_"Haruta, _" Thatch says in a terrible voice, and then Marco's there, too, leaning over the table.

"Haruta," he says, and drops this morning's paper on the table. "Did you do this?"

_WORLD'S LARGEST OPAL STOLEN _, screams the headline, and right under that, _Kaitou Gold Returns? _

"What," says Haruta, grabbing the newspaper, and Ace leans in to read it too.

It's not bad, really, he thinks, skimming. Not all the details are right and some of that speculation is horrid, but over all, it's not the worst write up Kaitou Gold's ever gotten.

"Haruta—" Marco starts, and Haruta slams down the paper and looks up, shoulders straight and eyes hard.

"Kaitou Gold hasn't been seen in almost ten years, and even then the last sighting was in East Blue. There's no way—"

This is Haruta in full Work Mode and no one can think it's a prank anymore. Ace leans over more obviously, looking at the pictures, and he taps one and says, "But that's Kaitou Gold's calling card."

All eyes turn to him, and he shrugs. "I'm from East Blue," he reminds them, and Haruta nods.

"Okay, Thatch, coffee; Marco, information; Ace, write up anything relevant you know. Get Atmos out to look at the site and Izo to interview the museum people. I wanna know if this is the real Kaitou Gold and I want to know _how we missed this _."

Ace blinks and Thatch elbows him and says quietly, "Haruta's a bit of a fan, is all, and is probably pissed about missing the chance to see a heist in person."

"I can do a card trick, if that helps," Ace offers cheekily, and Marco frowns at him just as Haruta hisses loudly. Thatch raises his hands and goes to get coffee, so Ace shrugs and sets off to his cabin and his work desk.

The full moon's not for a few days anyway; there's not much else he can do but play along as Haruta goes slowly, quietly insane.

There are lists, lists of sightings and previous targets and an almost accurate and upsettingly comprehensive timeline, culminating in the ten year gap. There are theories. There are_ lectures. _

Ace listens with good grace, even after they leave the island, and bides the time away, catching up on his reading, going through old routines, and generally getting back in practice.

The next full moon, Ace meanders out on deck, climbs to the poop deck, and leans out over the back of the rail. He lifts a gem up to the sky and holds his breath.

Nothing happens.

He sighs, lowering it and making it disappear into his pocket. Of course nothing happens. The stone's not magic, or at least not Pandora, and he was an idiot for thinking it might be. He hunts through his pockets until he finds a colored bit of fabric he never uses and wraps the stone up, tying it securely. Then he vaults the railing, slides into the Command office, and snitches a bit of paper and a pen.

One side he addresses to the museum, and on the other he writes, _Thanks. _He signs it with a symbol and slides that into the fabric wrapping before, eh, _borrowing _a Coo from the coop.

"Take this back to the museum on Isla Blau," Ace tells it, and offers it a biscuit snitched from dinner. The Coo accepts this offering and takes off through a window.

Ace watches it go and sighs.

Still, even if it wasn't this easy, it's not a bad idea. Pandora's supposed to heal or grant immortality, Ace is pretty sure, and stories about magic gems are never only stories. These stories he even has from a credible source; books and journals and decades of research, now gone. Pandora, everything had said, can _heal _.

Pops has his IVs in at all times, these days.

There's only so much he can do from a ship, though, and Ace ducks back out and away to his hiding place on the back of the ship. He can't only steal things when the Moby Dick is in port; that'd be far too obvious, but even worse, it'd be so _tacky _.

Where would he even start? He knows his history and his myths, sure, but he's let his current events lapse and doesn't even know what's still on display or where.

Well, _he _doesn't.

There's a saying for this, that he dug up in one of his old journals, the ones that came with his workshop way back when, on stage shows and assistants: magicians draw the attention while assistants do the heavy lifting; never do yourself what you can make someone do for you. And Ace may not be up on the world, but he sure is friends with a top-notch spymaster.

"If I send notices again…" he muses. It's not his favorite thing to do; he'd rather leave calling cards after the fact than announce his thefts in advance, but Haruta is bound and determined to track down Kaitou Gold.

If he sends notices, Haruta will detour the ship straight to the target. Haruta will make lists and theories and plans, and Ace will be right there to read over a shoulder and stay one step ahead.

"Yeah," Ace says to no one, and he pulls out a packet of cards to play with as he thinks.

Haruta can find the targets for him and get him there, and all he'll have to do is send announcements and steal the things. It's a pretty neat solution, all told, and there's only one real downside.

He's never had his very own Lovely Assistant before, but he's pretty sure they usually wear fishnets and heels. Haruta can never, ever know.

* * *

Haruta wonders, out loud, if Kaitou Gold will go after the huge diamond on display on the island of Grand Dell, in Paradise.

There's an announcement, three days later, and Haruta turns the ship right around and hauls ass all the way to get them there the night before, and promptly passes out in order to spend the next day investigating every detail of the scene.

Kaitou Gold strikes that night.

Haruta wakes up the next day, nearly cries, and doubles down on the investigation. Almost everyone is very unimpressed with this.

_Almost _everyone.


	3. if you can't get what you want

Sabo hums quietly to himself as he slips around the wall and peeks. The guy's just turning the next corner, and Sabo sticks both hands in his pockets and meanders outward and onward, trusting more to casualness than care.

Half the trick in following someone is blending in, not sneaking, and Sabo's outfit fits in pretty well here. It's an upscale part of town, which is what makes the guys in long black coats and black hats pulled low all the more suspicious.

He kinda wishes Koala was here, honestly; couples are a lot less suspicious than lone young men. There's no point in wanting what you don't have, though, so Sabo turns the corner himself and keeps walking.

The two men have turned and Sabo just catches the tail end of the shorter one's ridiculously long, ridiculously silver hair disappearing between two buildings.

Sabo glances upwards but there's no easy and inconspicuous roof access, not along the busy thoroughfare in the nice area. Hesitating is the worst thing he can do, though, so he makes a choice and slips down the alley after them, lightfooted and quick.

Not quick enough, though; there's only one of them at the end and Sabo steps doublequick to catch up. Only the guy stops, there at the end, and turns to face him. "Help you?" he grunts out, rough and deep.

"Me? Nah," Sabo says lightly. "Just lost. I thought this was a shortcut."

"Sure is," the guy says, and then something heavy slams into the back of his head. "A shortcut to trouble."

There had been two of them, Sabo remembers far too late. He spins on his heel, trying to get both of them in his sight at once, and the world spins with him.

"A hard-headed one," the new guy says, raising a pipe for a second blow, and that's just adding insult to injury, that is.

"Shit," Sabo gasps, trying to get his back to the wall. There's blood in his mouth and a ringing in his ears, but he bares his teeth and grins at them. "C'mon then, assholes. Let's dance."

They are not impressed with his extremely polite invitation. That's okay, though; he's not really impressed by their anything.

The new one, who has silver hair down to his knees, slams the pipe forward at face-height and Sabo ducks forward, crouching and scrabbling under it. He's not gonna win two on one in an alley, not under a handicap like this, and this is the nice part of town. If he can just get out onto the streets—

He sees a kick coming, barely, and manages to take it on his shin instead of his knee. He curls up forward and rolls, getting to his feet and spinning around. This guy's fast; Sabo's already ducking another punch when he puts his head down and tackles the guy.

The guy almost dodges; he sidesteps and Sabo misses his body completely. He grabs the hair, though, and since he's already falling, he takes that with him. The guy makes a noise that's mostly yelp, partially scream, and Sabo grins through his pain.

Only two kinds of fighters have long hair: those powerful enough to not need to worry, and those who are more arrogant than strong. He's really glad this guy is the latter.

Sabo hits the ground, controlled, and rolls up and through, dragging the hair with him, and the guy's face bounces along the ground nicely. He'd like to stay and maybe strangle the guy with his own hair, just a bit, just as a lesson—a selfless service, really—but he's got places to be, so he scrabbles up and heads towards the main street again.

The partner is there, waiting for him, and Sabo backpedals. "That wasn't nice," the partner says, and catches Sabo's head in an open palm attack that drives him into the wall.

His ears are filled with tinnitus and his eyes are full of blur, but he tries to push it away. He doesn't need to see to be able to fight, and he'll absolutely bite whoever tries to lay a hand on him if he has to, even falling flat on the ground as he is.

A hand grabs his hair, rough, and lifts his head. "That hurt, you bastard," the long-haired guy says, and he shoves a knee into Sabo's back and bangs his skull off the ground a few times, presumably just for fun. Sabo hisses and writhes, but he's well and truly pinned.

There's a click, a noise he knows too well, and he struggles harder. He bucks up, trying to throw off the long haired guy, but he just laughs and says, "Nah, put the gun away. This kid deserves some _special _treatment, I think. Here, kid, open up like a good boy."

They shove something down his throat and he chokes and coughs and tries to throw it up, but there are hands on his face and his throat that won't let go. "There," the long-haired guy says in satisfaction, and Sabo barely hears him. He's too busy curling around his stomach, which is trying to eat the rest of his body.

He promised himself he wouldn't scream, but the only reason he's quiet, when the acid starts, is because he doesn't have enough breath to make a noise.

"Remember that, the next time you pull someone's hair," the guy says from far away and long ago. "Oh, wait. You'll be dead. Never mind then."

Sabo tries to says something, anything, and all he does is wheeze.

There's laughter, he thinks, probably, but everything is darkness and pain.

There's darkness and _pain _and it hurts and he _dreams _. It's a sickening rainbow swirl of fire and panic, with magic over it all, and there's glitter in his eyes and grief in his soul. He's missing—he's missing something—what is he missing?

There are things he does not remember.

* * *

_The things he does not remember are these: _

_He'd been a quiet kid, kept inside, and he'd read everything he could get his hands on. He'd learned, he'd practiced, he'd sought out new skills. He had found problems to solve, and some of those problems were mysteries. _

_Where did the rake go? Who stole the pie that was cooling on the windowsill? Which of the servants was sipping from the liquor cabinet? And when he'd run out of mysteries to solve at home, he had gone looking for them at the neighbors, and then further and further afield. _

_And then the thief appeared. _

_It was harmless, it was fun, it was frustrating, and it was unsolvable. With so many people in Goa, there was no way Sabo could ever be expected to actually find or catch the thief, but they'd let him try. _

_He had chased a phantom until one day in the woods where he found a friend instead, who was prickly and scared and just as lonely as he was. _

_"It's you, isn't it?" he'd said back then, eyes narrowing. "You're that flashy magic thief that keeps showing up and stealing from the nobles of Goa, aren't you?" _

_"And you're the detective brat who keeps chasing the thief but never manages to catch him," the other kid had said, flashing his teeth in something that had been a hair too threatening to be a smile. "Wanna make something of it?" _

_Sabo had looked at him for a long moment. He'd been sure the thief was older than him, but this kid wasn't at all. They were the same height, and the kid had had something in his hand, pockets full of tricks, and eyes full of anger. _

_"No," Sabo had finally said. "No, I don't. But I think we could work together, if you're willing." _

_He'd been invited back to a workshop that was a boat and let in on a secret. He had learned a card trick or two, or at least so shuffle properly. He'd learned how to be a liar, how to misdirect, how to be a test audience, how to know where he shouldn't look, and how to plan a heist. _

_He'd learned a lot, those long days in the forest. He'd learned how to be a brother. _

_He kept the lessons he learned, and it's made him such a good operative. It's made him into Chief of Staff for the Revolutionary Army. He remembers the lessons and how to apply them. _

_He's just forgotten all the context. _

* * *

He wakes up, blinking into night-darkness, and lets out a surprised _huh _. He hadn't expected that.

He lays there, blinking, because he doesn't dare move. Everything is screaming in agony, a burning kind of hurt right through his everything. It's like something burrowed down through his skin and all his muscles to nest inside his bones, and it's the worst thing he's ever felt, even worse than that time he was exploded.

"Ow," he says, propping himself up on his elbows and looking around. He's alone in the same alley, laying on the ground, his hat beside him.

He's sore and aching from his teeth to his toes and there's a headache like a wildfire behind his eyes, but he's not dead, so he manages to get up.

Nothing's broken, or at least nothing's complaining, but he nearly trips anyway. He catches himself, palms out, because he was taught how to fall and that's a reflex that's unforgettable. But it's a quicker fall than he expected, and the hands that catch him look off against the stone.

He flops over to sit tailor seated and examines his hands more closely. Then he pats himself down.

He's small.

That's new.

He staggers to his feet again and takes smaller steps this time. It's like he's ten all over again, but Sabo at ten was strong and smart and sharp, and he is still a force to be reckoned with.

He still wants back-up, though, and maybe a check up, so his first order of business is calling Koala and checking in. She'll be mad if he goes off the grid, and he's not sure he can operate his sloop by himself anymore. He'll have to get a ride.

The Revolutionary Army outpost on this island is off the main drag, but his head is swimming and he doesn't quite remember where. There was a restaurant on one corner and a shop beside it, but that's half of the town. The...the post office was on the corner, across from the newspaper office. He always makes a note of the flammable places.

He almost asks someone for directions to the post office and then realizes that he looks ten again. Maybe he'll play the little boy lost, my parents said to meet at the post office-

-or he could just dart in and steal an abandoned newspaper from a bench and get the address off the masthead.

He snags it and retreats, eyes scanning the top, and his attention dips to the story above the fold. _WORLD'S LARGEST OPAL STOLEN _, screams the headline, and right under that, _Kaitou Gold Returns? _

Sabo doesn't mean to crush the newspaper in his hand, but it's all crumpled up in his little fist. Well, shit, he thinks, and makes for the docks instead. Isla Blau is only two islands over; he can manage his sloop that far, or at least catch a ride.

If Kaitou Gold is back, after all these years, something's wrong. He doesn't know how he knows that, but he does. The only things he knows about the thief are a nearly-empty dossier in the Revolutionary Army database that he's sure is wrong, and the picture in this newspaper, but he knows exactly what the thief wears, and how he moves. There's a level of familiarity there that Sabo's never felt before, not this intensely, and something inside him is whispering _chase chase chase _.

Sabo's never been good at denying that instinct.

There'll be an announcement soon, he's sure. There'll be clues among the magic, because Kaitou Gold is good but Sabo knows what to looks for. He's always liked magic shows.

Sabo turns his face up to the wind on the docks. His body's still trembling, he's ten again somehow and he's made an enemy of some really creepy black-coated guys with ridiculous hair, but there's still a newspaper in his hand and a grin on his face.

Things are looking up.


	4. no one even knew it was really only you

It turns out phantom thievery is a lot like knocking someone off a bike with a baseball bat; there are some things you never lose the knack for.

Ace stretches his arms up above his head, leaning sideways, and then the other way.

This is his third heist back and he's more prepared now than ever; he's got even more smoke bombs, oodles of cards, his elbow wrapped, and his cobbled together thrift store outfit.

He really needs to suit up better if he's really doing this; Kaitou Gold has a reputation for being sleek as hell and Ace is not gonna be the one to break that tradition. This is his inheritance and he's always respected that.

But it's only his third time out again, and he's working with what he has and making notes as he goes. A different shirt, definitely, and more pockets-so many more pockets. Also loosen the seams and add tugs, and he definitely needs a sleeve pull, but all that's for later.

Still, it is only his second, and his first with an announcement. The good news is, they're not taking him seriously, not yet; there's a minimal Marine presence. But they're _not taking him seriously _, and yeah, sure, maybe he's out of practice, but that still chafes.

It's nearly midnight, though, and he doesn't have time for this. The target is a blue topaz, about the size of his thumb, and the security around it is just appalling.

The few Marines assigned are all gathered in the entrance hall, like they think he's stupid enough to come through the front door.

He's on the roof instead, crouched over the skylight, because they seriously left his target, which he announced he was taking, _right under the skylight _. People never learn, and they never, ever look up.

He lights up one finger as hot as he can get it and presses it against the glass until it pokes through. He adds more, and his other hand, and pulls himself a hole big enough to slide through. It's not as neat as a glasscutter, maybe, but it works and is a lot more convenient.

The rope he took from the ship's stores, and it's anchored on the roof's railing. Ideally he'd have gloves for this-he used to have gloves for this-but those are nice, not necessary.

He eyeballs the distance and loops himself a harness about halfway down, curling the trailing end around his waist and the slack around his shoulders, and then he climbs through the hole and starts letting the slack go, a handful at a time.

There's two Marines in front of the display, but Ace knows trained Marines; these ones are looking forward and only forward. He's just passing the roofline when a noise at a window makes them all flinch.

Ace reaches up the rope, makes himself a loop using his wrist as a break, and steps into it, hauling himself a good three feet up, back into the shadows, just as the Marines decide to investigate.

One leaves his post to head to the window, and the other starts actually looking around. Ace curses in his head and holds perfectly still. He's screwed if anyone looks up, silhouetted against the skylight as he is. He should've made the hole in the corner, even if it was farther from the railing. He's so out of practice it's painful.

There's a scuffle from outside, and a yelp. It's a familiar yelp, and Ace closes his eyes and sighs internally. Haruta really was not taking sleeping through the last heist well, huh?

Whistles split the night and there's a mass movement of Marines after Haruta. Well, that wasn't his plan, not really, but he's not about to pass up a distraction this good either.

As soon as the Marines are back in place, Ace drops. No slow hand over hand, not when he's on the clock; he lets the rope slither against his arm and over his palm, cutting waves of friction burn into his skin. He'd hoped do this without them noticing, but he wouldn't be a kaitou if he couldn't improvise.

He keeps himself hunched up into as low a profile as he can manage, and that, plus the dark outside of his cape, gets him down to the case. He steps onto it, already palming a smoke bomb.

A single controlled spark and he tosses it before it can start hissing; the smoke starts billowing up in front of the Marines' feet. Ace ducks back behind the podium, superheats his hand, and plunges it right through the glass.

Some of it melts but some of it shatters, and the sound is not at all covered up by the smoke or the guards' coughs. He grabs the topaz, though, so no matter what, he's already won.

"There he is!" one of the Marines yells, and an alarm starts ringing.

This is no longer a heist. He's got the gem, he's got an escape route, and he's got an audience.

Adrenalin floods his system and a wide, wild grin cuts across his face as he gives himself over to Kaitou Gold entirely. It's completely unnecessary and overly dramatic, but he whispers "_ Showtime _," to himself before he steps back up onto the podium and starts his performance.

* * *

There's a ghost following him.

Ace had caught the familiar flicker of blue and ignored it because it couldn't be. It's just habit, just history, just a hallucination. Every time there's been a Kaitou Gold heist, there's been a detective to chase him. It's just habit, now, that he's imagining one.

He ignores the yells and the footsteps and the familiar—so familiar, too familiar—figure dashing after him, heist after heist after heist.

Kaitou Gold has never been better; he's never laughed louder or stolen more or been more famous. Kaitou Gold is all running and fire and sparkles and magic and distraction and chaos, with laughter over it all. Just as it's always been, it's Ace that's the weak link.

Kaitou Gold escapes everything every time. Marines, police, guards, Haruta, and the ghosts of his past. Ace is the one who presses his back into the wall and bites down on his hand to stifle a scream and tries to breathe against the flutter of his lungs because he can't—it _can't _—

"Hey!" shouts a voice that he knows, a voice he could never forget. "Hey, wait up!"

Kaitou Gold pulls up his hood, puts on his grin, palms a smoke bomb and runs.

* * *

Sabo's crouched behind the balustrade of the second floor, near the doors to the balcony. He's small and still and easily overlooked, and that's just the way he likes it.

He's been there for hours; he entered this gallery through the front door during opening hours and hid, even knowing the heist wouldn't happen until midnight or so. It's not his first attempt at this, but he's determined that this time he'll catch up.

He holds his breath when midnight strikes, watching a dark shape slip through a high window on the far wall. The dark cloak ripples as he descends and Sabo rubs his fingers together absently. He knows the feeling of that fabric on his skin, rough on the outside and slick on the inside, and he knows the grin it hides, as bright as its lining.

He _knows _this thief; he knows he does. There's something important here, if he can just catch hold of it. He knows the rhythm of a heist and has a good guess how it'll go but it never ends in the conversation he needs it to; if he knows this thief, maybe—just maybe—this thief also knows _him _.

This evening's target is a diamond, fist-sized and fiery. The story attached is one of sorrow, like most of Kaitou Gold's targets. Sabo's seen the security measures already and he knows they're not enough.

The kaitou has been getting bolder; he started with stealth but he's gradually increased in showmanship. Tonight he throws a smoke bomb while he's still in the air, and a spark falls from his fingers to light it up.

There's yelling and coughing, and someone gets a hand on the kaitou, somewhere in all that. Sabo stays put; he's waiting for the last act.

The smoke starts to clear and there's a pile of guards and Marines, all yelling about catching Kaitou Gold. Sabo's seen that before, though, and he ignores them and turns his eyes upward.

The kaitou likes his escape routes high, which is why Sabo's where he is. He slams his way out through the balcony doors, grabs the railing and jumps for the decorative elements on the façade of the museum. He's young, yeah, but strong—strong enough to haul himself up and make the final jump to grab the railing of the roof.

It's a brutal ascent, hard on his arms and shoulders, but it's quick. He's in time to see Kaitou Gold halfway down the roof, running, and Sabo lifts his chin, breathes deep, and follows.

The kaitou's an adult, though—twenty, he somehow knows—and his legs are much longer. Sabo's got more desperation, though, and he draws in gasping lungfuls and pours on the speed. Kaitou Gold still hits the far roof before Sabo's more than halfway across, so he's reduced to yelling, "Wait!"

Kaitou Gold steps up onto the ledge of the roof, gives himself a shake, and pauses.

"Hey—" Sabo pants, skidding to a stop. Little legs were not made for sprinting and he's already breathing hard. "Stop—wait—!"

The figure turns, cutting a silhouette against the darkening sky, and it hits him low and hard. "Sorry," he says, light and casual. "No time for ghosts, memories, or hallucinations tonight, Detective."

It's the first time the thief has talked to him directly, and something about the title _Detective _, the rolling lilt of it, sends a shock straight to his spine. He's still panting but he gets out, "Wait! I just wanna know-"

There's a gunshot and Sabo spends one moment blinking and the next wheezing. There's a lot of weight on him and he's flat on his back, staring up at the sky, and covered in kaitou. "That's new," he says, and the kaitou makes a sound that would be a laugh, if it were less any ragged.

"Be careful, Detective," the katiou says, standing up and stepping back up on the edge of the roof.

He doesn't pause, not even when Sabo yells at him to, and with a bit of a grin and a tilt of his chin, the thief spreads his arms out in a gesture Sabo instinctively recognizes as habit before he steps back and off the roof. There's fear fizzing in Sabo's veins because he may be regressed down to ten years old but he isn't dumb. Kaitou Gold can't fly, he knows; he knows it deep and old, because there's stale panic in his throat when he watches the thief fall.

But there's a whumpf of flame and the night lights up. Kaitou Gold soars up and away on wings of fire, bright blue and yellow and billowing like flame. Kaitou Gold can't fly, so those wings aren't his.

They are familiar, though, and Sabo starts towards the edge of the roof, where the ladder is. He may not know where to find the mysterious phantom thief, but blue and yellow fire?

He hits the ground and heads in the general direction of the shore. It's hard to pump anyone for information when you're roughly knee height, but he thinks he probably won't need to.

The Whitebeards' ship is hard to miss.

* * *

Halfway across the city, most of the way to the dock, the firebird coasts low and aims for a roof, away from lights and people. He doesn't circle, just angles down and hits the roof, Ace first, and skids out the momentum, riding on Ace's back.

Ace spits out bits of roof and coughs, almost too loud to focus on the sounds of clicks and shifts above him, and it's a good thing he's fireproof or he'd be char by now.

"Wha—" Ace gasps out, but then weight settles more firmly on his back, pinning him.

"Was jumping off the roof really necessary?" Marco asks.

"What are you—" Ace wheezes out. His mask has come undone and is sliding down his face, reminding him of his situation, and he inhales as far as he can and tries on a smile. "Ah! You're—a fire bird?"

The sigh Marco heaves is loud and long and full of regrets. "Can it, yoi," he says. "I know it's you, Ace. Why are you even running around pretending to be Kaitou Gold?"

"How'd you know-wait, I'm not pretending! Hey! I _am _Kaitou Gold!"

"Kaitou Gold's reputation is older than you, Ace."

Ace slams his palms down and tries to push himself up or over or move at all, really. "It's inherited! Lemme up, I'll fight you-"

"Stop struggling," Marco says, and there's a level of tiredness in his voice that cuts Ace better than his words. "I'm not going to let you up until I know you aren't going to run away, yoi."

"Who's running away," Ace snaps, trying to buck up. Marco is lighter than he was expecting, but he's got all the leverage.

"You are," Marco points out reasonably. "So I'm just gonna take you back to the ship, yoi."

"You can't take me back like this!" Ace howls, writhing anew. "I'm still in costume!"

"Sounds like a personal problem to me."

"Marco! No! I can't—they can't know—!"

"Well," Marco says, all sweet sarcasm, "maybe you ought to have thought of that before _rushing off at night _and being _gone _and not leaving even notes and making everyone _worry _, yoi."

"You can't drag me back to the ship," Ace says firmly. "I won't go, not in costume. I'll fight you every step of the way."

"You're coming back if I have to tie you up and haul you there—"

Okay, that's a threat Ace cannot let stand. He pulls his shoulders back just enough to cross his left arm over his chest, plants his right palm as close in as he can get it, and pushes with his full leverage and hips in a sudden violent burst. Marco nearly rides it out but the second Ace has a clear side he's throwing an elbow and scrabbling upwards, using his feet and hands to get his torso and legs off the ground.

"You can't," he pants. "I'm _Kaitou Gold _. I've been training since I could walk. I can escape nearly anything and you haven't even got rope here. You've got nothing that can hold me, Marco."

Marco's on his ass while Ace is on his feet, and he looks up at Ace. It's a dark night but Ace can see him all right, can see the considering tip of his head, and Ace starts to drag himself up, patting down his pockets, getting ready to run, when Marco says, "Please."

Ace stops dead.

"You don't…owe us anything, but we're your family, yoi," Marco says, sitting up into a cross-legged tailor seat. "And maybe I can catch you, maybe I can't, but Ace…why are you running?"

Ace bites back his first response because it's rude and his second because it's a lie, and he finally sighs. "I…what I do. It's not—safe."

Marco sits in the dark for maybe a whole second before he laughs. It's not a restrained huff or a polite sound of amusement; Marco full-out laughs, a loud, happy sound that hits Ace right in his pride. "What—" he bristles.

"Ace," Marco says, and his voice is still full of amusement. "We're _pirates _. We sail under a _yonko _. We live with _Thatch _and _Haruta, _yoi. You think our lives are _safe?" _

Ace shuts his mouth, and he can feel the dull flush climbing his face. "No, I—No, this is _serious _," he says. There's daily risk and then there's getting involved in the target Ace is painting on himself, but as long as he keeps his secrets, maybe….

He's selfish. Of course he's selfish; he's a thief.

And he wants to go back. It's stupid and selfish, but then, so is Ace. He can let Marco underestimate the danger as long as he works harder to protect them all, right? Ace sighs and steps forward. "I guess you guys at least know how to take risks."

"Yeah," Marco says, still grinning, and Ace offers him a hand up. Marco takes it and Ace leans back, pulling with his entire body, and pulls Marco to his feet. "Come on, yoi. Let's go home."

"Home," Ace repeats, savoring the word. "Yeah, just give me a sec, okay?"

He steps back, flips his hood up over his head, and closes his cape around him, turning on a heel twice before coming to a stop. He reaches up to grab the top of the hood and draws the entire cape up and away with a flourish, sweeping across his now bare chest and bowing.

There's no reaction so Ace sighs and straightens up, running his fingers through his hair to resettle it. "Ta da," he tries, spreading his arms to show off his usual shorts and accessories. Quick-change isn't his strongest suit, but being able to shuck off the very distinctive outfit of a world-renowned thief fast is kinda important in his line of work.

"You really are a magician," Marco says, and there's something in his voice, a kind of quiet surprise, that makes Ace smile.

"Well, yeah," he says. "I mean, Kaitou Gold is probably one of the best in the world. Ace, not so much."

"You offered to do a card trick for Haruta, yoi."

Ace shrugs, body language casual and grinning fit to burst. "Yeah," he says. "I'm from East Blue. We grew up watching Kaitou Gold's heists. I think most kids learned a few tricks, you know?"

Marco huffs out a laugh. "Well, if you really don't want anyone to know, then your secret is safe with me. But consider opening up in other ways, maybe; I think your brothers would like this side of you, too."

"That's not how magic works," Ace says cheerfully. "Masks on masks on masks, and all that. Hey, we going home or what?"

Marco sighs and shifts his shoulders, flicking his form out into fire, and Ace observes the transformation carefully. "And you call me dramatic," he says, and then turns and runs towards the edge of the roof.

There's a scuffling behind him and whumps of air displacement, and Ace grins, wide and wild, and doesn't stop, not even when he runs out of roof.

Talons close around his upper arms right at the apex of his jump and Ace dangles under the phoenix, laughing wildly as Marco makes upset bird noises and takes them home.

* * *

A foot nudges him awake and he shifts in the coil of ropes he fell into and doesn't open his eyes.

"C'mon, up and at 'em. Don't think moonlighting gets you out of doing your chores, yoi," Marco says, standing over him, and Ace snorts himself awake and blinks up at him.

"Wha—" he yawns, then stretches, long and leisurely. "Chores? Yes, chores. Responsibilities, I have those."

"Your time management skills are appalling," Marco says, but his mouth is twitching, and Ace rolls his head to crack his neck and, not entirely incidentally, check the positions of people on the deck.

"My time management skills are great," Ace says, letting just a bit of that grin creep across his face. "Do you have any idea how much time magic practice takes? And planning? And—"

The affronted look on Marco's face is everything Ace could ever have wished for. "Are you telling me," he says, and then nearly chokes on the next words, "that you actually _are _really responsible?"

"Couldn't live a double life if I wasn't," Ace admits shamelessly. "You know, you might've been right; it's nice to have a test audience again."

"A what?"

Ace relaxes back against the ropes and says, "So when you're learning a magic trick, you practice it til you can do it, right? Couple days in front of a mirror, probably, just to get the set up. Then you take it to your test audience and perform it, and they tell you if it's worth actually learning before you sink months into it, you know?"

"Days?" Marco repeats. "Months?"

"Magic ain't easy," Ace says, waving it off. "But the point is, your test audience doesn't necessarily know how the trick is done or which props you use or anything, but they know you without your patter; they know you behind the mask. Have to, really, to get a proper critique. I haven't had someone to show off to since—well, in a long time."

"You show off all the time, yoi."

Ace leans back a bit more, arching his back and planting his hands to lift himself up to standing in a neat kickover. "You've never seen me show off," Ace promises him, and Marco's expression sours.

"Is this okay to be talking about here?"

"I'm watching out," Ace says, because he is. "I'm also a lot more paranoid and prepared than you think I—"

He scales the mast in a second flat, throwing himself into a mess of rigging to hide. It's instinct and for a second he doesn't even know what's triggered him, but there it is again, a familiar flash of a familiar tattered blue in the corner of his eye.

He goes entirely, utterly still, all the way down to the breath in his lungs.

Sabo's dead, Sabo's a ghost, Sabo is the _best detective ever and will totally see through him shit shit shit— _

Marco's blinking around and Ace closes his eyes. He's overreacting; maybe he's hallucinating. There's no way a ten-year-old Sabo is _actually here _—

"Hey mister," the Sabo ghost says in that horrible annoying singsongy way that Sabo thinks is how actual kids talk. "Is this a pirate ship?"

"Uh," Marco says, and Ace opens his eyes in just enough time to catch Marco's upwards glance. Ace makes frantic _no no no _gestures and Marco looks back at the ghost of a memory.

"Pirate ships are no place for kids, yoi," Marco says instead, and tries to shoo the kid back towards the landing boats. "How'd you even get here?"

Not by swimming, Ace judges, because his clothes aren't wet, but the most appropriate answer is still that it's _Sabo _and there's never been anything that could keep him out of where he wants to be, not even Ace's walls.

"There's nothing that can keep me out," the not-Sabo says and Ace hurts inside.

"You'd better be going, kid," Marco says finally. "Won't your parents be worried about you?"

Ace closes his eyes again and grimaces.

"I'm just looking for something, mister," the kid says, stretching up to his tiptoes and glancing around.

"There's nothing here for you to find," Marco says, starting to loom just a little. "Let's get you back—"

The kid sighs explosively and Ace can almost see him giving it up as a bad job. There's the squaring of the shoulders and the lift of his chin that had always preceded his worst ideas.

"Look," he says, dropping the little-boy-lost act. "I'm not trying to catch Kaitou Gold, okay? I just wanna talk to him. But more than that, I want him alive and breathing and out there stealing things. Someone else _doesn't." _

"What…?" Marco says.

"They've been hunting for a while, but they started shooting last night," the kid says, and Ace should have known better than to be selfish. No matter what Marco said last night, this is a level of danger no one would be willing to throw themselves into.

"My name's Sabo," the kid says, and Ace shudders to hear it. "I'm with the Revolutionary Army. We're tracking a criminal organization that is larger and more powerful than even the Government."

Is this what Sabo's been up to? Not being dead, joining an army? It's so wild, so far out of the realm of possibility, but Ace is a magician and he lives on the knife edge of possible.

"They want Kaitou Gold dead because he's a threat to their goals. He's trying to steal something they want," Sabo continues because no one's interrupted him. "They'd want me dead, too, if they knew I was alive. I don't-I don't need to talk to Kaitou Gold myself, but-please. _Please. _If you're helping him, then you know him, and if you know him then you love him, and I really _really _need him to be safe.

"I'm not empty-handed," he promises, spreading his hands and continuing. "I have information and the entire power of the Revolutionary Army to throw behind this, but you—Marco the Phoenix, the Whitebeards—you have connections I don't."

Marco is quiet a long moment and finally he says, "So what are you proposing?"

"I'm proposing an alliance," Sabo says, and the words drag out of him like it hurts. "Working together, as equals."

Marco glances up at Ace again. Ace's heart is pounding in his ears and he's sure he's entirely white, but he doesn't make more _no _signals. "He's in danger?" Marco asks, and Ace remembers last night, remembers telling him it wasn't safe, and he wonders if this time Marco will listen.

Little Sabo lets out a breath that's stale with anxiety and clasps his hands behind him. It's an old gesture, one Ace knows, because it's as much a lie as everything else. Sabo's not calm or steady like he's projecting; he's hiding his hands so no one can see them shake.

"Yes, he's in danger," Sabo says. "I know who and I know why, but where and when depend on Kaitou Gold. I've been trying to track them forever, you know, ever since-"

"Ever since you died?"

And Sabo spins, hands up and eyes wide. "What?"

Ace looks down at him and crosses his arms. "Is that where you've been all this time?"

"What?"

"It is, isn't it? You thought you were _protecting _us, didn't you?"

"I—"

Ace sighs and tumbles out the rigging, a controlled fall that looks a lot looser than it is. He lands on the deck quietly and bends deep to bleed out the momentum. "This thing you do," he says, dropping to sit on his heels so they're the same height. "This guilt complex self-sacrifice thing you do? I really hate it."

Sabo's hands are tight at his sides and he's got his chin up but he looks scared. Half panicked. A look Ace hasn't seen since—well, since. "I don't—" Sabo tries, and stutters to a stop.

"Sabo. _Sabo, _" Ace says, the name dragged out him like his heart. "I—what happened? To you?"

"What happened to _you? _You're the one out getting shot at-"

Ace laughs, once, short and sharp. "If you're gonna haunt me, at least have the decency to pretend you're real, won'tcha?"

"I don't know," Sabo says. It' a non sequitur, and his eyes aren't tracking and his hands are shaking, now that they're visible. "I don't-what's your name?"

Ace stares at him. "You...don't know my name," he says, slow and even.

"Would I ask if I did?" Sabo says with a weak smile, but Ace doesn't smile back. "C'mon-no, I'm sorry, I meant—look. I don't have to know who you are, but can we work together against this threat?"

"You—you're asking me to ally myself with you? Against a mysterious, all-powerful organization that wants us both dead?" Ace says, because _his _Sabo wouldn't even have asked; he'd've already had a plan worked up with Ace as bait and informed him offhandedly three minutes into it. "And you don't even know my name?"

Sabo takes one long slow blink to inhale, and his little hands fold into fists. He lifts his chin, meets Ace's eyes, and says, "Yes."

Ace stares at him, then nods. "No," he says.

"What—no, please...!"

"You're right, _whoever you are. _You _don't _know me, and I will never fall for a trap this obvious. You can't even do your research right."

"But—!"

Ace just stares at him. "You don't know my name," he says. "if you don't already know it, you'll never find it," and it hurts that this not-Sabo even _tried. _

This not-quite-ghost tilts his head down, clenching his little fists and takes a deep breath. "This—it isn't over," he says, and his eye blaze. "I'll be back. Don't think I won't."

He turns on his heel, strides to the railing, and disappears over it. They watch him go, and there's no splash.

"...was that wise?" Marco finally asks.

Ace blows out a breath. "I don't care."

"But if the Army really—"

"I don't care," he repeats.

"But if this is real, if someone does want you dead—"

"I _don't care _." He turns, done with this conversation.

"Well, _I do." _Marco grabs his arm as he goes to stomp by, and Ace rips it roughly away.

"No one else dies for me," he says and doesn't look back to see whatever face Marco is making; he just stomps away, off to hide on his little strut behind the forecastle, and he's almost fast enough to avoid the guilt.

He's got enough ghosts already.

* * *

Kaitou Gold is fast. He's smart and strong and a master of flips n' shit, and he has the stamina to go literal days.

He takes blatant advantage of this and sends out another announcement the very next day, to the groaning disappointment of a very tired Haruta, who is very put out to have missed yet another heist by fleeing from Marines.

What Kaitou Gold is not, is inexhaustible.


	5. hit 'em right between the eyes

Marco has decided that he doesn't much care for magicians.

Magic, that's great; sometimes Ace will casually vanish or reappear things in his hands, or he'll absently manipulate five packets of cards simultaneously into a kind of sea king-looking cut, or he'll just straight up disappear in the middle of conversations, and it always gives him a little thrill. Now that Marco is watching him and looking for it, he can't imagine not noticing all the casual ways Ace applies magic in his daily life.

But magicians, Marco is coming to realize, are horrible people. _Masks on masks on masks, _Ace had said, and _practice first, practice alone. _

He hadn't thought how that life could affect someone until now, really, because Ace isn't acting much different. He's still cracking jokes with Haruta, teasing Thatch, being lazy on deck, and taking naps in the sun. He's never seen doing work, but his paperwork's always in on time and his Division runs smoothly.

If Marco didn't _know _he spends his nights getting shot at, he'd never know Ace spends his nights getting shot at.

There's no tell in his speech or body language, but the bags under his eyes are growing by the day, and Marco watches their progress and fingers the card he'd found in his pocket.

And then one day the bags are gone; Ace comes to breakfast in the morning fresh-faced with a smile and bright eyes. Marco sips his coffee and stares at him from a distance, counting the mugs of caffeine Ace puts away.

When Ace gets up at the end of the meal, Marco does too. He heads towards the kitchen for a refill he doesn't want and makes sure to set his pace easy and slow, letting his eyes droop more towards still-asleep.

Ace may be the only magician on the crew, but he's not the only actor.

He times it just right to brush by when Ace's back is turned to throw a last insult towards Thatch, and staggers at contact. "Oh, sorry, yoi," he says, putting one hand on Ace's shoulder to steady him and overreaching, and the two of them go down in a tangle of limbs and yelping.

"Shit," Ace says, blinking at the ceiling, and then he laughs. "Hey, you awake there, Marco?"

"I am now," Marco mutters, getting up. He stares mournfully into his mug and turns towards the kitchens, not bothering to offer Ace a hand up, and Ace laughs behind him again, surprised.

"Watch out, everyone; Marco's sleepwalking!"

Marco grumbles as he gets his refill and, when his back is firmly to the entire room, he looks at his hands and rubs his fingers together.

Sure enough, there's a powdery residue on his fingers where he'd brushed Ace's face. He makes a disgusted noise at the makeup and picks up his coffee.

Marco turns on his heel and heads towards the door. "Haruta," he says. "Got a treat for you, yoi."

"Is it another fall?" Ace snarks, and Marco points a finger in his direction without looking at him.

"You've lost speaking privileges," he says.

There's a murmur at the table; that's not a usual reaction from Marco. Ace makes a sound and says, "Hey, not fair! Why, what'd I do?"

"You don't get to talk until you can talk without _lying _, yoi," Marco bites out. He's done with this. No one gets to die for Ace? That's fine; no one is dying at all, Ace definitely included. "Haruta. Come _on _."

He stalks out, not bothering to see if Haruta's following.

It's still pretty early, right before first shift actually starts, and there's only a handful of people in the Command cabin. "Out," Marco snaps at them all regardless.

"But sir," someone says, and Marco ignores him, letting Haruta clear the room while he dials up the number on the card he's still got. It's a bit dingier and the corners aren't sharp anymore, but the number is clearly visible and that's all that's important.

"What's this about?" Haruta asks, pulling up the chair next to him. Marco makes a _shut up _gesture as the line connects.

"Hello, you've reached the connections office! What can I do for you today?" a cheerful voice answers.

Marco takes a deep breath, leans both hands on the table, and says, "Hi. This is Marco the Phoenix, First Division Commander of the Whitebeard pirates, calling for the Revolutionary Army."

The chair next to him skids from how hard Haruta sits up to attention. There's a pause on the line and the voice, now flat, says, "Hold, please."

The den den mushi goes blank and Haruta pokes Marco in the side and says, "The Revolutionary Army? Like, the _actual _Revolutionary Army? The one that's so secretive and well-hidden that I can't even find proof they _actually exist _?"

Marco says nothing, just waits, and then the line clicks and there's a new person on it. "Hi. Can I help you?" asks a female voice that's smooth and almost sweet, if not for the undercurrent of worry and overcurrent of suspicion.

"This is Marco the Phoenix, of the Whitebeard pirates, yoi," he repeats. "I'm trying to get in touch with someone about working together against these idiots in black that keep trying to kill my family."

There's a beat on the line and the snail's expression doesn't change. "Long black coats?"

"One has the most ridiculous silver hair I've ever seen," Marco confirms. "They keep showing up to the Kaitou Gold heists and not being careful of collateral damage, and some of my family keep getting in their line of sight."

He glances over at Haruta for a single second, meeting wide eyes. Ace isn't the only one in the line of fire; he's just the best equipped for it. Haruta tends to get ultrafocused on a goal and absolutely would run in front of a bullet without ever realizing.

Ace was right. It's too dangerous for the family to know; they'd get even more involved. Ace was right, and that just makes Marco madder.

"Ugh, those guys are the worst, right?" the snail transmits. "We do have several operations dedicated to their downfall."

"Yes," Marco says, and the relief is staggering. "Yes, good, yoi. Look, I've got the authority to bring the entire extended fleet to bear, and we have one of the most extensive information networks in the Grand Line. If you can show us where to focus, or even just where to start, we'll bring the wrath of the Whitebeards down on them."

There's another long pause. "Well…"

Marco's fingers curl tight around the edges of the desk. "My little brother was _shot at _last week," he grits out. "Just tell me who to kill, yoi." There's a rage that's been building since Ace refused his help, and he's desperate for an outlet and not above begging. " _Please _."

"Well," the operative says hesitantly. "We don't actually…know?"

Wood cracks under his fingers and he doesn't let go. "_ What _."

"Look, we're _trying _, okay?" she snaps back. "We lost our Chief of Staff to them recently; we're hurting too."

Marco breathes and forces his fingers to relax. He glances down at the card, connects a few dots, and says, "Your Chief of Staff; was his name Sabo, by any chance?"

"I can neither confirm nor deny—" she starts, flat and cold, and Marco sighs.

"He's the one who gave me this number, yoi," he says. "Well, I found this card in pocket after he left, so I assume—"

There's a crackle of static and then the connection comes back with "—thoughtless rat _bastard _, I'm gonna kill him _dead _—"

Marco blinks and exchanges glances with Haruta, who shrugs. The swearing continues, quickly sinking to some truly creative and horrifying depths. Haruta's eyebrows go higher the longer it goes on, and eventually reaches for some paper to start taking notes.

The diatribe runs down and she eventually snaps out, "When was this?"

"Maybe three weeks ago?" Marco guesses. "We were on IIsa Blau—" Haruta does some quick math and scrawls a date on the note paper, under the swears, and Marco says, "End of last month." He connects that with _lost _and _thoughtless _and comes up with, "Did he forget to tell you he wasn't dead?"

There's yet another long pause and then she finally says, "Sir, I can neither confirm nor deny—"

Marco, to his own surprise, chuckles. It's unexpected but it's—nice. "Gotcha," he says. "Looked a bit young to be Chief of Staff, but he was fine, yoi. In one piece, even."

"Good," she says. "It'll make it easier for me to kill him."

"He's been showing up at the Kaitou Gold heists, yoi." Haruta startles beside him, and he rolls his eyes. "Not publicly, but he always seems to know just where the thief is going to be."

"Are you suggesting we follow him?" she asks. "I'm not sure we can—"

"No, not quite. Look, I can't get Kaitou Gold to work with us," _because he's a self-sacrificing idiot, _he doesn't say, "but I can point him in a certain direction, yoi. I thought we could set up a trap, use Kaitou Gold as bait, and work together to see what we catch."

"Yes," she says immediately. "Yeah, that's great. Let me run it by our strategists here and we'll see about picking a place and setting it up. You sure you can get Kaitou Gold there?"

"Absolutely, yoi," Marco says. "I know where he's getting his information."

_where? _Haruta scribbles on the paper, underlining it several times and pushing it in front of Marco, then leaning in close to tap it aggressively. Marco puts a hand on Haruta's head, pushing to get some space and absently pats the messy hair. Haruta pouts; Marco ignores it.

"Don't call us, we'll call you," she says. "You know, just for security reasons. Also, would you be so kind as to lose this number?"

"Of course," Marco lies, and Haruta tries to pick his pocket for the card but Marco's already hidden it elsewhere. "We look forward to working with you."

"Us too," she says then hangs up, and Marco realizes he never caught her name. Suddenly the fact that Sabo introduced himself is a lot more significant.

"You know how Kaitou Gold is picking his targets?" Haruta says. "And when did you meet someone from the Revolutionary Army? Can I meet them? What—"

"I want to be ready to go the second they get back to us with a location, yoi. When you get it, go sit in the galley and discuss whatever stone it is like you usually do, and I'll set the course, yoi. For the heist itself, we're gonna have two Divisions on the ground—the First and, mmm, the Fifth, and every Commander we can spare."

Haruta shuts up and taps the pen against the paper, watching him. "You're really taking this seriously, aren't you?"

"I," Marco says precisely, "am tired of watching my family members run headfirst into danger."

"Sorry," Haruta says, and Marco exhales heavily.

"Just watch yourself, yoi." He turns on his heel, off to start recruiting Commanders. "And let's get this taken care of as fast as possible. I have _had _it with idiot magicians."

* * *

It's exactly as easy as he'd thought it would be, in the end. No matter how bright a face Ace is putting on it, he's running ragged, and when Haruta talks up this story, something about it being formed from a woman's tears, there's an announcement at the targeted gallery out on the island of Grand Dell as fast as a Coo can fly.

Marco's already got them on course, and he's got the Commanders on his side. They've got a time, a location, and the perfect bait.

Marco also has patience, something Ace visibly lacks. He's been keeping his hands full, lately; cards and coins and sewing, sometimes, and dice he pulls from nowhere. His fingers are always on the move and it annoys Marco now instead of entertaining him, because he caught a glimpse once, of them empty, and they were shaking.

One more day, Marco tells himself, and he goes over the plan with Haruta one more time, making up the shore leave rotations and tracking down those involved.

One more day, and then it's the day in the announcement.

* * *

They could not have picked a better place for this, but it's awful.

There's a crowd here; it's a big island, a popular gallery, and Marco's pretty sure half the crowd are either evil hitmen or secret spies. Still, that leaves half the crowd to be screaming fans, and Marco winces and looks away.

It's on one side of a square, surrounded by other buildings, and there's Commanders and Revolutionary Army operatives on each and every one of them, waiting for the signal.

Marco catches a flash of blue in the crowd, and he doubletakes but can't find it again. Still, it settles something inside him to know he's got his own backup.

The clock strikes midnight, a figure steps up onto the roof of the building, and Marco holds his breath. It's striking, and oddly beautiful, seeing that billowing cape catch the wind in front of the full moon, and even from here he can see that wide, wild grin.

"Ladies and Gentlemen~" the thief calls, spreading open his arms. "It's showtime!" and he takes a step forward, right off the roof.

The cape swoops out behind him, lighting him up in golds and glitter, and Marco's breath catches from the sheer spectacle of it. A smoke bomb is already on the ground, billowing up, and Kaitou Gold falls into the cloud and disappears.

There's a lot of yelling and a good amount of charging the smoke cloud, and when it clears there is yet another small dogpile and several Marines have arrested several other Marines, and Kaitou Gold is nowhere to be seen.

Until his laugh rolls out, deep and dramatic, and Marco looks up to the face of the building. Kaitou Gold is halfway down, perching on an outcropping and watching the chaos below. "I see you've found yourselves replacements," he says, and then a volley of bullets pings off the building's façade all around him.

Marco's sure—he's _sure _—that some of the bullets hit Kaitou Gold. They have to; it was a concentrated spray and that cape is such a shiny target. But Kaitou Gold twists around, moving freely, and jumps right off the building, the mad bastard.

Halfway through, at the jump's peak, he stops, hovering for a split second, and then he ascends, cape flared like wings, laughing and being shot at the whole way. It's hard to watch, even knowing that Ace is made of fire and that bullets can't hit him unless he lets them.

But someone is shooting at Marco's family, and Marco is done with this. He raises his hand and sends up a puff of blue fire, just a bit, just above his head, and steps back to watch and wait.

The thing about snipers is that they're perfect for distance and surprise. Snipers don't work so well against an army of angry spies and pissed off pirates waiting all over the city to ambush anyone who dares shoot at one of their own.

The Whitebeards and the Revolutionary Army work well together, Marco thinks, standing there, in the midst of the chaos, and he turns his eyes upwards. People don't look up, by nature, but Marco's as much bird as person and he's been working on that instinct lately anyway.

Sure enough, there's a figure on the edge of the roof three buildings over, and he strolls over that way. The outside of the cape sucks up light until Kaitou Gold is just a dark smudge against the night, and that's the perfect example of Ace, truly; showy and attention-grabbing, wrapped in secrets and misdirection, and every last bit of it lies.

"Thank you for your help," Sabo says from right next to him, and Marco nearly jumps out of his skin.

He swallows the noise he almost made because it was far closer to bird than human. He coughs once and says, "Thank you, yoi. For the backup."

"Yeah," Sabo says, putting his hands in his pockets and rocking back on his heels. It's a familiar shift and Marco blinks until he places it; it's what Ace does when he's embarrassed. "With this amount of captives, we're gonna get something to go on," he says. "Nice thinking, calling in the Revolutionary Army."

Marco smiles, and then he lets it grow because hell, why not? "Met a nice young lady, yoi," he says. "She was very upset with you. Haruta took notes on the threats; they were very detailed."

Sabo coughs into one hand and says, "Yeah, about that—I should probably go."

Sometimes Marco is so grateful he's the big brother to everyone on his crew; being a little brother must _suck _. "Please let me know if there's anything else I can do, yoi."

"Yeah, of course. I gotta say, it's good to know you're with him, you know? That someone else cares enough to watch his back."

"It's good to know someone so powerful is watching out for him, too," Marco replies. Sabo brought the Revolutionary Army in, and is apparently their second-in-command, despite the fact that he's knee height and can't be more than ten or so.

"Pft, of course. Have you _seen _him practicing with his Striker? That boy needs all the help he can get," Sabo says and Marco looks away so that he's looking anywhere but up. Sabo pays him no mind and continues, "I spent the last _month _rewriting bits of history about the last Kaitou Gold to hide his identity, you know? People actually think the previous Kaitou Gold was Roger, how funny is that? She wasn't even—"

His speech cuts off with an _argurk _noise and Marco glances over fast enough to watch him disappear straight up. He sighs, shakes his head, and slumps against the wall. To guard them, and prevent interruptions, and be a lookout, and several other reasons that aren't eavesdropping.

"You're _Sabo _," Ace is saying above him.

"Of course I am!"

"You—you're not a trap or a ghost or a fake, you're—you're _actually Sabo!" _

"I told you—"

"You didn't remember my name! Of course I thought you were fake!"

"You don't anymore, though?"

There's a laugh but it's full of pain and awful to hear, and Marco hunches his shoulders and doesn't look up. "There's a lot of people who know my name, and anyone can find my history," Ace says. "But, Sabo, there's only three people left in this world who know the Portgases were a matrilineal thief clan."

Marco's eyebrows bounce up. Ace had said the mantle was inherited, but Marco had thought—wait, then why Roger?

"What happened to you?" Ace asks above him, and someone shifts. "Why're you all small again?"

"Those guys who've been shooting at you? They're the ones who did this to me," Sabo says, and then there's more scuffling noises. "What, why did you think I was following you around? You were just bait. It's not all about you, so wipe that arrogant grin off your face."

"But arrogance suits me," Ace says, and someone gets punched, probably in the face. It devolves into yelling and insults and Marco smiles.

It sounds painful up there, but there's also laughter, and none of it is faked.


	6. i'm wide awake, it's a scene about me

Marco sets foot on the deck of the Moby Dick and immediately realizes this is a bad idea.

"Where have you been?" Thatch asks, leaning against the rail and watching them come up the gangplank.

"Here and there," Ace says, grinning, and it's small but dangerous, the kaitou grin bleeding through. Thatch squints at him and he qualifies, "There, mostly."

"Did everyone else make it back?" Marco asks, because unlike Ace, he has priorities.

"Yeah," Thatch says. "Everyone else is here and fine, except for the heart attack and low-level panic of coming back from a very dangerous ambush to find our big brother missing."

Marco ignores the implied accusation because he kept every single one of his brothers alive today, Ace included, and he refuses to feel guilty for that. He _refuses. _"I had to wrangle this one, yoi," he says, jerking this thumb over his shoulder at Ace and his little brother.

"It's a full-time job," Sabo agrees, then tips his hat at Thatch. "Pleasure to meet you, Commander Thatch. Thanks for keeping my brother alive."

"Sure," Thatch says, baffled but pleased. "I like keeping people alive. It's my favorite past time."

Sabo grins at him. "Is that something you learn when you join up with the Whitebeards or does it come standard?"

"It's a big brother thing, kid," Thatch says, and Ace snorts. "Hey," Thatch says, turning on him and sticking a finger in his face. "Hey, you weren't even there today, so you don't get to judge anything, ever again."

Ace blinks at him, opens his mouth, closes it, and then looks at Marco.

Marco looks purposefully away.

"Right," Ace says, and grins. "Right, I can see how you'd think that. I meant to be there! Would you believe I fell asleep?"

Sabo pivots around and kicks Ace right in the shin. "Stop sabotaging yourself," he tells Ace. "That's my job."

Thatch blinks at them all, baffled, and Ace sighs and looks back. "I _was _there," he says, and he says it serious and certain, meeting Thatch's eyes. "Just because you didn't see me doesn't mean I wasn't there."

Thatch looks back for a long moment, then nods. "Okay," he says. "Okay. If you say so, I'll believe you."

"I'm sorry," Sabo says, looking back and forth between them. "Are you telling me you've been sailing with a crew this big for this long and _no one knows _?"

"Hey, I'm excellent with secrets!" Ace protests.

"You're really not, yoi."

"Look, just because you're a creepy stalker who invited himself along—"

"I literally stopped you from jumping off a roof," Marco points out, and Ace scoffs.

"No, you didn't," he says. "You may have _caught _me, but no one has ever _stopped _me from jumping off a roof."

"This is true," Sabo agrees. "He's never seen a roof he hasn't wanted to jump off."

"Wait, why is Ace jumping off roofs?" Thatch asks, looking between them all. "And why is no one stopping him?"

"Fastest way to get down," Ace says, and he looks down at Sabo. Sabo stares back up at him, eyes demanding, and Ace sighs. "Do I have to?"

"Ace," Sabo says, crossing his arms. "Why don't you want to?"

"It's dangerous—"

"Not any more. We literally just handled that."

"—And I'm wanted—"

"You live on a yonko's ship. Surrounded by some of the highest-bounty pirates in the world. It's not even your most dangerous name."

Marco catches that and files it away for later. It's important, he's pretty sure, but not right now.

"They don't need to know—"

Sabo sighs, a familiar sound. It's a big brother sigh, one Marco knows intimately. "Ace," he says, rubbing at his face. "If they don't know, you've been living a half-life. Your family has always been your test audience, you idiot, so take off the mask, stop performing, and start living."

Ace stares at the ground mutinously.

"Do you know what's going on?" Thatch asks Marco, and Marco tips his lips and his head. Yeah, but it's not his secret to tell.

"Are we talking about how Captain is Kaitou Gold?" someone says from right behind them and Ace and Sabo both jump. He's familiar, and Marco squints at him. Ace's former First Mate, right? Masked something?

"Not your Captain anymore, Deuce," Ace says tightly, and the pitying look Masked Deuce gives him is a work of art. "Also, no. Cause I'm not."

Masked Deuce gives the exact same sigh Sabo just had. "You gave Emmeline earrings for her birthday. Earrings from the museum back on Isla Blau, the first heist of Kaitou Gold—"

"Not the first—" Sabo and Ace protest in sync, and Masked Deuce keeps talking over them.

"—were last seen in the hands of Kaitou Gold, and then it's her present. From you."

Sabo tugs his hat down to hide his face. "I know you know what subtlety is," he says. "But for a magician who trades in misdirection, you can be amazingly obvious."

"Hey!" Ace objects, then looks around for support and finds none. "Hey," he repeats weakly. "…she liked the earrings."

"That's not the point," Sabo says, and Ace scowls at him.

"It's exactly the point," he argues. "It's the only point that matters."

"I'm sorry, hang on, back up a bit," Thatch says. "Kaitou Gold?"

Ace looks around at the stubborn faces, then shrugs and gives up. He looks back up, meets Thatch's eyes and says, "Told you I was there."

"_ You're _Kaitou Gold," Thatch repeats flatly.

Ace spreads his arms in a _ta da _motion and says, "I'm all kinds of magical."

Thatch looks him over and says, "I don't see it."

It's not disbelief and it's not denial, but Ace's face sets, and Marco steps in between them. "It's been a long day, yoi," he says. "For all of us. Let's get some rest, yeah?"

He meets Thatch's eyes, and Thatch stares at him, then over his shoulder to Ace. "Yeah," he says, aware something is wrong but not quite sure what. "Of course. But hey, after that, can you show me a magic trick?"

"I dunno," Ace says, and it's a pleasant as he ever is, his smile as mild. "You'd have to ask my keepers. I'm apparently not allowed to make my own decisions anymore."

Marco closes his eyes. He did bring this on himself, going behind Ace's back like this. He's not sorry and he'd do it again, but it still hurts. "Ace," he says quietly. "We—I didn't…"

"Didn't ask? Yeah, I noticed."

"Didn't give us a choice," Sabo cuts in. "You wouldn't stand by and watch us commit suicide. Why should we let you?"

Ace shuts his mouth and looks away, but it's not the _I don't know _silence; it's the _I refuse to tell you what you already know _silence. There's secrets on top of secrets with Ace, Marco is beginning to see, and he remembers _masks on masks on masks _.

"Yeah," Sabo says, steady, and Ace isn't meeting his gaze but Sabo won't look away. "We tried to stop you, we tried to help you, and when you wouldn't let us, we did it anyway."

"You didn't have to drag them into this—" Ace starts, and Sabo cuts him off.

"You think I had anything to do with this?" he says, spreading his arms to indicate everything. "Marco called up the Revolutionary Army and Haruta made these plans, and we were just along for the ride. Your family did this for you, Ace."

Ace does look up then, looks up and around at Marco and Thatch, and Marco meets his gaze evenly.

"I don't like it when my family's in danger," Marco says. "I really don't like it when someone starts shooting at my little brother."

Thatch jerks, stepping forward and shoving Marco out of the way. "People have been _shooting _at Kaitou Gold!" he says, horrified, and starts patting at Ace like he's looking for bullet holes. "People have been _shooting at you?! _"

Ace stands still, allowing the treatment, watching Thatch's freak out with mild bafflement. "I'm a logia," he points out. "It's not like I was in danger."

"What if they took you by surprise?" Thatch says, spinning Ace around to see his back, and Ace goes without complaint. "What if they were shooting seastone bullets! What if there were civilians behind you and you stayed solid because you wouldn't let them get hurt!"

"There weren't," Ace says, finally batting Thatch's hands away and turning back around. "I didn't."

"But _why _are they shooting at you? Why are you even stealing gems in the first place?!" Thatch says, hands fluttering nervously, and Marco blinks.

That's—he never thought to ask. He doesn't know why Ace is doing this either. Much less why he's a target.

"They think I have something they want," Ace says. He grins, and it's fake; it's shallow and dull and Marco hates it.

"Pandora," Sabo breathes, eyes wide, and Ace glances down to meet his eyes. "They think you have Pandora, don't they? That's what you're trying to find. That's why you return some of the gems afterwards; they're not the right one."

It's the first time Marco's heard that name and Thatch is blinking; he's never heard it either. "What's Pandora?" Marco asks.

"A magical gem said to cry tears under the full moon," Sabo tells them. "Tears that grant immortality."

"Definitely don't want that in the hands of an evil conspiracy, do we?" Ace says with that same fake smile, bouncing on his toes.

Marco frowns. No, they don't, but there's something off about it, still, something that's bothering him. Ace doesn't lie outright, but he's very, very good at talking around the truth, isn't he?

"How do you know all this?" Thatch says, squatting down to be at eye level with Sabo. "Who even are you?"

"Read about it in a book," Sabo says dismissively. "I'm—" he stops, and then he looks up at Ace, eyes wide and face pale. "The books," he whispers.

Ace is still for a whole second before he stretches. It's elaborate but familiar; it looks natural, like every time he's ever wandered onto the deck to take a nap in the sunshine. "I'm gonna go take a nap," he says. "Some of us have been up all night getting shot at."

"Ace—" Sabo starts, reaching out, but Ace turns on his heel and with a _poof! _of smoke, he's gone.

They all stare at the dissolving cloud for a second and then Thatch says, "Kaitou Gold, huh?"

Marco sighs and says, "Yeah, apparently, yoi. Now, if you'll excuse us, we have to go make sure he stays safe, since he won't do it himself."

"Yeah," Thatch says thoughtfully. "Yeah, you do that. If you need anything—"

"Thanks," Marco says, and beside him Sabo shakes himself out of it and says, "Thank you," as well, quiet and sincere.

Thatch waves them off and Marco leads Sabo across the deck to the Command cabin, opening the door and letting the kid go in first.

"Haruta," Marco says, shutting the door behind them.

"Sup," Haruta says from a work desk, popping the 'p'.

"Got a treat for you, yoi."

Haruta freezes and then slowly looks up from a report. "The last time you said you had a treat for me, you called up a super secret guerrilla army, browbeat them into helping you go on a murder spree, and declared war on the Illuminati."

That's…not entirely inaccurate, he supposes, but it is wildly exaggerated. At least a little exaggerated. Well. "Not the Illuminati, yoi."

"Actually," Sabo says beside him. "I mean, we can't prove they _aren't _the Illuminati."

"They're not the Illuminati," Marco says flatly, then realizes he's arguing with two people who spy on the world for a living. "…are they?"

Haruta gives him a flat look. "Sounds like something you should have known before you declared war on them."

It really is, but Marco refuses to be ashamed. "I don't need to know," he says. "You're the strategist here, yoi."

"Tactician," Haruta and Sabo both correct automatically, and then Haruta eyeballs the small kid. "And who are you, now?"

"Hi," Sabo says, sweeping off his hat and giving his most elaborate bow. "Commander Haruta, right? It's an honor to meet you, really."

"Thanks, kid," Haruta says, unimpressed. "But that doesn't answer my question."

Sabo straightens up and settles his hat, then glances sideways and up to Marco. Marco, in turn, throws up his hands. "I am so done with you two and all your secrets, yoi," Marco says. "Do whatever you want. I'm gonna go call your girlfriend and burn down some Illuminati bases."

"She's not my—" Sabo starts as Haruta is saying, "They're not actually the—"

Marco sets a den den mushi down in front of Sabo and says, "Dial."

Sabo makes a face but dials. Haruta is staring at Marco, then looks at Sabo, and then reaches for a notebook and pen. "Are we talking to swearing lady again?"

The line clicks over as Sabo is saying, "Swearing lady?"

There's a pause and then the voice of the swearing lady says, "If that's who I think it is, then yes. There is going to be so much swearing."

"Hey," Marco says. "Found something of yours, yoi."

"Thank you, Commander," she says. "Now put Sabo on the line and find yourself some earplugs."

Haruta is already scribbling and Sabo whines, "Aw, Koala, do you have to—"

"No," she says sweetly. "I don't _have _to. Like you didn't _have to _disappear and—"

"This is an open line," Sabo interrupts her, and she shuts up. "I'm sorry I didn't check in, and I owe you one."

"You owe me so much more than one," Koala says. "If this isn't a social call, what's up?"

"We're a go on Project Blackbird," Sabo says, and Haruta scribbles some more. "We've got full cooperation from the Whitebeards and I'll be the on-site contact for it."

"The reports from Grand Dell are starting to come in," she says. "This goes up to the top, at the very least. It's not an easy fight; you know that, right?"

Marco watches Sabo close his eyes for a second, and there's a sad kind of smile on his face when he says, "I don't care," and Marco can almost hear the echoes of weeks ago.

"Sabo, this is—"

"I'm doing this," Sabo says. "I won't drag you into it, not if you don't want me to, but this is—Koala, this is _personal _."

There's a catch on the line, and a moment's pause, and then she says, voice calm and professional. "Understood. We'll accelerate the timeline and read the other teams in on this. What's the plan?"

"What do we know?" Sabo says. "Oh, also, Commander Haruta's on the line."

"Commander Haruta, the head of intelligence and strategy for the Whitebeard fleet?"

"Uh, hey," Haruta says. "Nice to meet you. I love your vocabulary. It's very impressive."

"Right," she says, and if it's just a bit faint, well, Marco's not gonna point it out. "Anyone else listening? Any other game-changing assets I should know about?"

"We've got the full cooperation of Kaitou Gold," Sabo says, and the noise Koala makes is high and sharp.

"We do?" Haruta asks, glancing at Marco, who shrugs.

"Yeah, he'll do whatever I tell him to," Sabo says, waving it off. "I've been helping him plan his heists since we were ten; he'll listen to me."

"Aren't you still ten?" Haruta asks, squinting down at the kid.

"Uh," Sabo says, looking down at his small hands in surprise. "Oh, yeah, well, I meant ten the first time."

"I'm sorry, the _first _time?" Koala says, and her voice is tight in a way Marco knows intimately, usually from questions like _Thatch/Haruta/Ace did _what _? _

"Not important right now," Sabo says, all clipped and professional. "The issue I'm seeing is that Haruta wasn't entirely wrong with calling them the Illuminati. They've got fingers in every pie and people in the highest offices. Any action we take is going to just get shut down from the top."

"Do we care?" Marco asks. He's never one to work around a problem when he can go straight through instead. "They're not inside the Whitebeards or the Revolutionary Army, right? So does it matter?"

Sabo looks to Haruta, and Haruta, also serious, nods back. "It matters," Haruta confirms. "Unless you want to be at this for the rest of your life, that is."

"Unless you're willing to personally kill every single asset we dig up, they're gonna get away," Sabo agrees. "Can't hold them in prison when the warden's working to get them free, you know. Can't prosecute when the judge is crooked."

"The best way to topple a conspiracy is to drag them into public," Haruta says. "We get everyone looking for them. We make it so dangerous to associate with the name that the spies and double agents drop them."

"And we make them such evil villains that the Marines will go after them and keep looking, to keep the pressure on, so they can't reform," Koala puts in. "We need to build up the bogeyman and then shove them into the light."

Sabo and Haruta nod at each other, and Marco just sits back. This isn't his job; he's going to listen to the experts and do what they recommend.

"People will talk to the Whitebeards," Haruta says. "We'll put out a standing reward on information for black coats."

"Kaitou Gold can cause chaos," Sabo says. "We'll catch Nobles in the crossfire, start an outcry."

"And we'll start packing the powderkeg," Koala says. "Rumors, blame, publicity, etc."

"Good," Sabo says. "Time to kill the Illuminati."

"They're not—" Marco starts, but over the den den mushi, Koala interrupts him.

"Well," she says. "I mean, we can't prove they aren't, can we?"

* * *

Kaitou Gold's next heist isn't from a gallery or a museum. It's at a noble household on the island of Parvado; the lady of the house has quite a jewelry box, apparently.

Her husband hires all the guards on the island, and she wears the necklace herself for safekeeping.

Kaitou Gold slips in through her bedroom window, behind all the guards, and claps a hand over her mouth before she notices he's there. He turns her around, smiles roguishly, and presents her with a flower.

"Might we trade?" he asks, and she blushes and takes the flower, but doesn't hand over the necklace.

He waits just for a second, and the knockout gas on the flower puts her under. He lays her out on the bed, takes the necklace, and is gone before the guards even notice.

He takes a detour past the front of the building on his way out, dipping low to be visible.

The barrage of bullets smashes every window in the facade and Kaitou Gold is already up and away. He's done no damage at all and returns the jewellry within a week.

The guys in black did several thousand belli worth of property damage, and the noble is outraged, and very far away, Koala makes sure the rumor spreads.

* * *

There's something to be said for the right kind of reputation, Haruta muses, sorting through reports.

The Revolutionary Army might be whispered about and feared, might have spies on every island, but it's the Whitebeards that have been turning up the most information in this case.

Probably because they're not, in the strictest sense, spying. Unlike a secret guerilla army, the Whitebeards can call up the islands under their protection and ask if they've seen any weirdos in black, and actually expect an answer.

And what answers they are, too. The sheer numbers of reports would be overwhelming to a regular person, but this is Haruta's idea of fun, and it's also a good, valid reason to finally make a large conspiracy board, with color coded pins and threads and cross-referencing. It's taking up most of the back wall of the Command cabin and spreading constantly.

Haruta hums and puts an orange "possible sighting" pin in an island out in South Blue, then shuffles through some more papers. "Sir!" one of the members of the Twelfth says, crashing to a stop. "New sighting!"

"Good," Haruta says, grabbing for the reports. "Jozu and Namur just got back, didn't they? We'll get them back out tomorrow; here's the intel. Get me the debriefs for their teams, and the Astel Island group's check in was an hour ago; I want that update. And someone get me Sabo! I need to know about the heist schedule!"


	7. gonna go far kid

Ace is spending most of time in his cabin, or on his little strut on the back of the ship. He's been going through supplies faster than he ever has before, and the heist requirements are getting more and more specific.

He's running low on podwer pellets because they're running low on talcum powder. He sighs and heaves himself up and over the back of the ship to mosey his way to the Command cabin and tell someone about this.

If he's gonna run around as bait for them, he's at least going to do it well-supplied.

He steps into the Command cabin without knocking and the room he finds himself in chaos incarnate.

There are members of the Twelfth Division everywhere, and paper everywhere there isn't people. One entire wall has been given over to a map of the world with pins of every color, some connected by threads.

He walks towards it, oddly drawn. He's never seen a map this big before, much less annotated like this one.

Sabo and Haruta are bent over a table in front of it; Sabo is standing on a chair in order to be tall enough. They both look up at him but he keeps his eyes forward.

"Wow," he says, raising careful fingers to one of the blue threads. "This is a mess."

"You try backtracing hideouts and labs from rumors and old gossip," Sabo says, but there's no bite to it.

Ace's eyes catch on an orange pin out in South Blue, and his fingers freeze. "Oh," he says. "Oh, of _course _."

"What?" Sabo says, finally looking up, and having to blink the gumminess out of his eyes.

Ace ignores him. "It would be, wouldn't it? I don't know how I never…"

"You've got something?" Haruta says, teleporting to stand behind his shoulder.

"It could never be anywhere but Baterilla," Ace says, eyes far away.

Sabo makes a noise and comes to stand on his other side, ducking under to get in front of them. "Baterilla," he says, "The Portgas Manor?"

"They think I have Pandora," Ace says. "That's why they're chasing me. What if…what if she found it?"

"They don't know about her either, do they?" Sabo says. "I changed everything I could find, and that was so little. Didn't you say so? Only three people in the world know about the Portgases."

"Yeah," Ace says, eyes sharpening. "Yeah, and it's not like anyone else could get in there. I'm going myself."

"Wait, wait," Haruta butts in. "What's going on? What are you talking about?"

Ace turns and grins widely, wildly, and says, "I'm going home."

* * *

There's a house on a cliff overlooking the sea, and it takes Ace's breath away.

He's never been here before but it's familiar; there was a sketch of it in a journal he had long ago, done in pencil and colored with nostalgia.

He misses those books, even now, but that's an old ache and easy to ignore. He blinks up at the Manor instead.

"It's beautiful," Sabo says, and then he takes a deep breath and says, "Just like—just like in the journal."

"It wasn't your fault," Ace says immediately. Sabo makes a conciliatory gesture which is a complete lie, and Ace says, "Sabo, really—"

There's something about standing there, on the shore in the shadow of his ancestry, that makes everything more distant and immediate. The air is heavy, and Sabo won't meet his eyes.

"I took your boat," he says, looking out over the sea. "The only thing you had from her—your workshop, all your props, all the books, all the _history _—"

"Sabo," Ace says, aching. "Don't—"

"I took it," Sabo says, "and I sailed away, without you, and I let it get blown up."

Ace says nothing. He just closes his eyes.

"I'm sorry," Sabo says finally, and it's raw and painful like Sabo never is. "I never meant to hurt you like that. I didn't mean to, but I took away your brother and your future and your home, all in one fell swoop, and then I forgot everything. I'm sorry, Ace. You'll never know how sorry I am."

"I know," Ace says, and it's so wrong to have Sabo so short when he's not. They're supposed to be the same height, always. "I never blamed you."

Sabo makes a noise and Ace opens his eyes but looks away, up towards the house. "Yeah," Sabo says next to him, because Sabo always heard what he couldn't or didn't say. "Yeah. Okay."

There's too much going on; the past few days have been upheaval after betrayal after lie, and Ace feels like his skin is made of flash paper; thin and one move away from going up in sparks. He can't deal with Sabo's guilt on top of everything else, not right now.

"Let's go," he says instead, and they start up the winding path to the Portgas Manor.

The cliff face is sheer, and in some parts they're climbing more than walking, but they're clearly going the right way. There's a patch of wall that's discolored, where the stone of the house meets the stone of the cliff, and that's where they're going.

Ace is sure the Portgas Manor is very pretty. He's also sure it's very useless. You don't leave your workshop in plain view, and the Portgas family was known to be polite and law-abiding folk, right up til the end.

Their secrets will be hidden, and no self-respecting thief would walk through the front door.

So the back door it is, and the patch of discoloration from away is, up close, a door painted to match the walls around it. There's a lock on the door, but a lock has never stopped Ace, and this one won't either.

It leads to a tunnel, which leads to a staircase, which leads to a hall with a door painted gold.

Ace opens his mouth to make a quip about the color, but he stops. Not now. He opens the door instead.

The halls are dark, this far in, all stone and short ceilings; Kaitou Gold has never been tall. He keeps his eyes moving, though; a single secret door is not a security system.

There are, in fact, traps, but they find the paintings first.

The first one is a portrait of a woman Ace doesn't know. He recognizes her, though; he knows that pose, those freckles, and most of all, he knows that grin. She must've been the first, Ace muses, and he reaches out to touch the frame.

There's a spot worn smooth; a single smudge where the gilt frame has been polished, and he trails his fingers over it, wondering how many others before him had—and something up ahead _clicks _.

"Right," he says, and looks up at his ancestor's painted grin. "Right, traps."

He's careful as he moves on and Sabo sticks close to his back, stepping only where he steps. It's just a stretch of corridor, though, leading to the next painting.

This one is another woman, with fire-red hair and she's got her legs tucked up under her, caught forever mid-leap, one hand holding the brim of her tall hat, grinning like her predecessor. There's no spots on the frame from hands, and though he runs careful fingers around it, all he finds is dust.

He steps back to look it over, and then starts carefully down the corridor, placing his feet delicately. One of the stones is loose, and Ace stops where he is to regard it and the long stretch of floor beyond it.

He glances back at the picture, then forward again. "She liked to fly," he says, and then sinks down on one knee. "Gonna need to carry you," he tells Sabo. "I think we have to jump."

Sabo climbs up without a word, hooking his hands over Ace's shoulders and wrapping his legs tight to hang on. Ace stands, keeping his hands loose, and looks up once again.

There's a bar, about a jump's worth away, hanging from the ceiling. Ace takes a few steps back, says, "Hang on," and takes a running leap.

The extra weight would probably stop any normal person, but Ace isn't normal. He's strong, he's trained, and on a good day he can jump over a mast, if he uses his fruit. His hands slap into the bar and he uses it to swing forward into another leap, aiming to land clear in front of the next painting.

He sticks the landing and feels Sabo slide down, coming to stand beside him again. He's still quiet and Ace shoves that aside for later.

This one he knows; "Carmine," he says, comparing the profile with that from a half-forgotten memory of a faded pencil sketch. She was Rouge's grandmother.

In her painting, she's posed on a ledge, arms out to hold on to a railing behind her, the wind whipping her cape up and around, stars falling like thin silver wires across the sky.

"Balance," he muses, and looks down the corridor. He lights up a hand, holding it out, and sure enough, light reflects off the thin wires creating an angled maze.

He hasn't done a grid like this in years, not since Gramps oversaw their training, but he has time on his side, and he takes it slow and careful. Sabo makes his own way through, sticking low; his size is, for once, an advantage.

It's almost meditative, really, and Ace is calm as he rotates back up to standing in front of the next painting. This is his history, and he's earned the right to walk this hall. He steps up to greet his great aunt Scarlet, and he knows her by the grin on her face.

There's playing cards everywhere in this painting; they fall around her and cover the floor, and there's a fan in each of her hands. One has blue backs, and the other has the four suits, black-red-black-red. Scarlet was the one who brought cards into the mix, really, the one to turn Gold from a Kaitou into a magician. She had a handheld launcher that scaled cards at dangerous speeds, and she'd begun the calling card tradition.

"It's numbers," Sabo says, and Ace looks over at him. He's leaning into the hallway, inspecting the floor. "Each stone has a number."

Ace looks back at the painting. Cards, clearly, but—

His eyes catch on the cards in her hand. Black-red-black-red, but more than that—he laughs softly. "It's a stack," he calls back. "The Stebbons Stack, from the journal. Start at a one and count up by threes."

"Clubs hearts spades diamonds," Sabo says, and edges out onto the first tile. "Do you still use it?"

"Of course I do," Ace says, and lays his hand on the painting, silently thanking her. "It's the most versatile stack I know."

He waits until Sabo is all the way across and then follows, easy and light on his feet. One, four, seven, ten, thirteen, three, six, nine—

He looks up into his mother's face.

He's seen pictures of Portgas D Rouge before. He's still got one of her old Wanted posters, folded up and hidden away with Luffy's. This is different.

This is a Rouge who was Kaitou Gold, a Rouge who was free and wild and magical, and she's balanced on a ship's railing, the wind in her hair and he grin just as bright as the rest of them. Just as bright as his own.

"Hi," he says softly, running light fingers over the textured paint. "Hi, I—" he has to swallow, and then he finally gets out, "Thank you."

He knew, from the second Gramps tossed him the map and the lockpicks and told him the boat was his, that this was his inheritance. He's known, for longer than he's known his father's legacy, that he was the sole heir to his mother's. He knew he'd be Kaitou Gold, and he knew it was history that weighted to cape so heavily.

It's been a burden and a pleasure, and he's so, so thankful to have had the chance to carry it.

His fingers trail down and he lets them fall, his eyes catching on the full-size trunk on the floor underneath the painting. He looks up at Rouge one more time, then sits down, takes out his lockpicks, and gets to work.

It's complicated but not tricky; there's a lot of tumblers but no surprises. He's in no hurry, though, not in the calm detached mood of this place, and he takes his time to do it right, keeping up the light pressure of the torque wrench until the lock clicks under his hands.

There's a book in the trunk, laying on top of a layer of fabric. It's a leatherbound journal, tied shut with a long strand, exactly the kind Rouge had favored. There's a little velvet pouch tucked behind the thong, held securely against the cover, and he lifts the book out and closes the trunk again.

The velvet bag is old and musty, but he tips it up and a small jewel, brilliant red and about the size of his thumbnail, bounces into his palm. He closes his hand around it and says, roughly, "You found it."

Sabo sits down next to him, turning himself sideways and resting his small back against Ace's side. It's a watchful position, and Ace relaxes and opens the journal.

The writing is chaotic, pretty penmanship done roughly, and it would be hard to read if he hadn't spent his childhood learning to. _The legend of Pandora_, it reads, _is a lie_.

_We are magicians, we Portgas, and we know what can and cannot be done. We walk the edge of impossible, and we make a living with magic. We know, more than anyone else, that even on the Grand Line, you cannot make something from nothing. _

_Pandora does not create immortality. Pandora does not create anything. What Pandora does is rebalance. _

_This is the story of how my greatest prize cost me my greatest treasure. This is a story of Kaitou Gold, and of a woman, and of love. _

_We are the Portgas, and we are thieves… _

* * *

_Rouge was young when she'd started out. She had a childhood of training behind her, a cape on her shoulders, and the world at her feet. _

_It was her mother's sister, before her, and their mother before that. Her mother never took to the acrobatics, not really; she was more of a strategist. It was more fun to be the brains behind the plans, she'd always said, because this was the primary strength of a clan—none of them ever worked alone. _

_It was her first heist and her aunt Scarlet was with her. They were aiming for—Rouge doesn't even remember now what the target had been, just the nerves and the chase and the incredible, unbeatable rush that left her high and giggly and collapsing under the weight of the adrenalin. _

_One heist and she was hooked. _

_Her aunt had met her in a back alley, taken one look at the way she was gasping on the ground, and she'd nodded. "You've got it," she'd said, and Rouge, punch-drunk and silly, had nodded back, fist closed tight over a bag. "No," Aunt Scarlet had said, kneeling down and ignoring the prize. One hand had tilted Rouge's face up to the starlight, and she'd said, "You're going to be the next Kaitou Gold. You've got the grin, girl." _

_And Rouge had known she was smiling, wide and wild, but she suddenly knew how it looked on her face from the outside; she'd seen it in every picture of every Kaitou Gold there ever was. "I've got the grin," she'd repeated, head spinning, and she's long since forgotten what she stole that night but she's never forgotten what she gained. _

_Rouge was not the best Kaitou Gold there ever was, but she took to it like the wind to the skies. It was easy and natural and instinctual, and she loved it like breathing. She was not the most prolific, either, but she never came away empty-handed and she never got caught. _

_She put on the outfit, she put on the grin, and she put on a show. Kaitou Gold stuck wheresoever she pleased, and with her family behind her, Rouge was unstoppable. _

_She met a young man one day, in her daytime clothes; she gave him a grin and took his wallet and he was none the wiser. She saw him again, and if he'd missed his money, he didn't mention it. Instead he gave her a flower and asked for her time, so she gave him a kiss and took his coat for her own when she left. _

_"That boy's a keeper," her aunt had said to her when she saw him again. She'd dazzled him with a few sleights and left with a treasure map he'd carelessly had in his back pocket. "He knows how to woo a thief." _

_"You think he does it on purpose?" she'd asked, looking over the map. _

_"If he doesn't, then it clearly doesn't upset him. If he does, then even better. Marry that man; you'll not find another who puts up with thieves like us so easily." _

_"I don't intend to ever marry," Rouge had said, and she meant it. She loved her life, and there would never be anything—or anyone—she left it for. _

_She stole his possessions, one by one, every time they met. He let her have everything and in return, he gradually stole her heart. One day, she snitched the contents of his pocket in passing, out of habit, and found a ring with her name on it. _

_But he was dangerous and she was young, so she took the question and didn't give him an answer. _

_Thieves are selfish, and she liked shiny things. She liked being chased, and she loved being loved. She let him chase her, and along the way she fell in love. _

_She never said yes. He didn't need her to. _

_She didn't mean to get pregnant. _

_The Portgas family gathered around her and wished for a daughter, bright and beautiful, to carry on their line, and Rouge laughed and laid her hands on her stomach and wished only for happiness for her child. It was the best gift she could ever give. _

_But she was made for freedom and acrobatics, and her hips were narrow. Carrying a baby was hard for her; it hurt. She fell sick. She vomited constantly and cried. _

_She wanted her baby, but it _hurt.

_Her family searched for a stone, one they'd heard of in passing, one that could heal, because that is how a thief family copes with stress. They searched for it for ages, and it was her young man who found it, in a haul he claimed. He's a pirate, he says, and he handed over the jewel, laughing. He liked shiny things too. _

_But Pandora isn't what the legends said it was. Her Roger held it up to the full moon and wished upon it, to give Rouge a chance. To help her, and her baby, and he passed the gem to her. It didn't weep, but Rouge did. It stopped hurting and she could breathe, and she could laugh, and they danced under the moonlight and she kissed him, bright and happy. _

_He started coughing the next day. _

_He was coughing up blood in less than a week. Her family hadn't been subtle in their hunt; they were thieves, not detectives, and time was against them; they weren't careful, and their hunt was observed. _

_There was an organization that had looked at generations of Kaitou Gold, connected it to the story of immortality, and come up with the wrong answer. They hunted down Kaitou Gold, every one of them, and they died, all of them, though none of them died easy. _

_But there was always another, and even her mother, who had no love for the acrobatics, stepped up to buy Rouge more time. They all died, and then Roger took a spare cape and went out to be a distraction and to cause chaos in her name. _

_He let the mask fall and the world pinned her crimes on him because it was the very last present he could give his love, was distraction and misdirection, just like she taught him-just like a magician. _

_Roger's sacrifice bought them time and his life took them to term-and past - but her baby was a hard birth, after the extended pregnancy. He was quiet, cold, and struggling to breathe; magic gems can't substitute for everything. So she penned this journal and contacted someone Roger trusted, and she took the gem in hand one more time. _

_The shadowy organization was initiating a hunt for anyone with Gol blood, even then, to lead them to Pandora. As long as Kaitou Gold stayed dead, though, it would be safe. Kaitou Gold was being pinned on Roger, and the Portgas name should be safe. _

_Rouge was used to taking what she wanted, but Roger gave her his life, and there was never anything she wanted less than that. She gave it all to her child, her little boy, that and this trunk, on the off-chance he came here one day. _

* * *

There's a letter to him at the end, words meant for his eyes only, and he reads them and cries. He sits there in front of his inheritance with his brother at his side, under his mother's painted eyes, and he cries.

He cries for his mother and her tragedy, and for how beautiful she was. He cries for his loss in never knowing her, and for the loss of the workshop she'd left him. He cries for his brother's life, and his death, and for Luffy's determination to never be alone again, and for the crushing unfairness of life. He cries for the weight of his father's legacy and for the glory of his mother's, for all the secrets he's kept, and he cries, finally, with huge gasping sobs, for himself.

It takes a long time, but he cries himself out, and it leaves a raw kind of clean behind. This is a gift he never expected to find and a warning he didn't know he needed, and somehow, in this place, in this moment, it's easy to unmake a decision.

Roger tried to save everyone alone, and he died for it. Ace is gonna save them too, but he's not going to do to his family what his family did to him.

He sniffs, and a handkerchief is pressed into his hand. "Thanks," he says, and blows his nose. He tucks the handkerchief away in his own pocket afterward and just like that it becomes his.

Sabo waits patiently while he pulls himself together. "You good?" he says after a bit when Ace's breathing steadies, and Ace laughs, rough and raw.

"Yeah," he says, and exhales heavily. "Yeah, you know what? I think I'm fine."

He stands, using the trunk as leverage, and turns to offer Sabo a hand up. Sabo takes it, and Ace pulls him to his feet. Then he looks down at the trunk and says, "There's no way we're getting this back down that hall. There must be another way."

"Yeah," Sabo agrees. He goes to pick up one side of the trunk then realizes there's no good way for him to help someone several feet taller than him carry it, so he just grins and steps back. "Sorry," he says, and Ace waves it off.

"C'mon," he says, hefting the trunk onto his shoulder. It's heavy, but not too heavy. It's reinforced, but lightly, and he'd bet anything there's a false bottom inside.

He leads the way down the hall; there's no trap beyond Rouge's painting. There's more room, though, and he wonders if he might come back one day and hang his own painting. He hasn't been the most prolific Kaitou Gold, but he thinks they'd be proud of him anyway.

He hopes they'd be proud of him.

The hall ends in yet another painting, this one the size of a door. He pushes gently on the frame and it swings clear, letting them out into the house proper.

They stop and look around. "You were born here," Sabo says.

"Yeah, probably," Ace agrees.

There's a moment as they take this in, and Sabo says, "...do you want to look around?"

Ace thinks about it for all of three seconds. "Nah," he says. "We've got what we came for. I wanna go home."

* * *

There's a party, the night they get back to the Moby Dick.

Whether it was planned all along or a sudden decision, Ace neither knows nor cares. It's perfect for his needs, and he's all lit up inside with an itch, the kind he gets before a heist.

Pops is on deck, surrounded by his children, and Ace grins at him but doesn't approach. He eats, instead, stealing things off as many plates as he can, which is a fair few. He waits until night starts to fall, and then he wanders over to a stack of boxes.

They're different boxes than that night he listened to Jimnez tell a story he thought he knew, and they're stacked differently, but they still make a good stage. "Hey!" he calls across the crowd from on top of them. "Hey, I've got an announcement to make!"

Marco's down front and he looks up, raising his eyebrows at Ace, and Ace grins, wide and wild, a slash of mischief across his face that's no longer on the bleeding edge of madness. "Hey," he calls out again, and shoots up just enough fire to get everyone's attention.

When he has it, he stands tall and says, "I'm gonna tell you a story and then ask a favor. It won't take more than a few minutes, and it's for Pops' sake, so give me a chance, yeah?"

There's a murmur as the crowd settles down, and every eye turns to him. It's a heady kind of rush, but it's familiar; there's a jittery sensation in his chest and his blood feels carbonated, but his hands are steady.

"Once upon a time," he says, and a lot of people groan. He laughs and says, "I promise this won't take long and it'll be worth it! I promise! Okay, so, once upon a time, there was a thief called Kaitou Gold."

That shuts people up, and somewhere in the crowd, Thatch hollers, "Yeah there was!"

Ace tips an imaginary hat at Thatch and says, "She inherited the position from her aunt before her, and from her grandmother before that. Kaitou Gold is a hereditary mantle, passed from generation to generation."

"Wasn't it Roger?" someone calls, and he grins back.

"Nah," he says. "She was just in love with Roger. They were gonna have a kid, but she got sick, so they started looking for a stone called Pandora, that was supposed to heal everything and make you immortal besides."

There's whispers and mutters and Haruta suddenly breaks through the front of the crowd and says, "Pandora?"

With their main intelligence officer taking it seriously, everyone else settles back down. "Yeah, the thing the guys in black have been looking for. They want to live forever, I guess, which is dumb, but they didn't ask me."

There's a bit of laughter. Ace's smile twists and so does his wrist, and just like that there's a blood red gem in his hand. "But Pandora's story was a lie. There was no immortality to be had."

"But stories are never just stories," Haruta says, echoing his own words back to him.

"Stories are never just stories," he repeats. "Pandora doesn't heal. Pandora doesn't grant immortality. Pandora doesn't do shit, honestly; but what Pandora _is _, is a reservoir.

"Pandora can rebalance life. So when Kaitou Gold got sick, Roger put his life into the stone and gave it to her. That's why he was suddenly sick, there, near the end. Humans aren't designed to drain themselves like that."

"It wasn't—" and here he takes a deep breath. "It wasn't quite enough. But Kaitou Gold, she took the gem, before she died, and she hid it because the power to give up your life for your loved ones is cruel."

Ace pauses here, for just a beat too long. "But you found it," Haruta prompts again, and Ace sighs.

"And here's the favor," he says, and his eyes are steady and his voice is strong. "Humans aren't designed to drain their lives like that. But we can give up a day or two, a week, maybe a month. Maybe a year, even, depending on your health. And Pandora uses it to heal first and then extend lifespans. It must, or Kaitou Gold wouldn't have survived her pregnancy.

"So I'm asking you, all of you. Every one of you is Pop's child, and there's—well, there's a lot of us. If you can spare a day, or a week, or a month, come see me. Don't give more than you can, but for Pops—"

But the meaning, the invitation, the _possibility _is clear, and they practically mob the stage. Ace stops trying to talk and looks down instead. Marco's right there, eyes shining, and he smiles, wide and bright and true. Ace nods at him and Marco steps up on one of the lower boxes and says, "Okay, hang on, yoi. Let's form a line; there's plenty of time—"

Ace leaves him to it and looks up, across the mob, to Pops' chair. Pops is staring back, face blank, and Ace lifts his chin and meets that gaze.

He didn't ask permission. He didn't ask if Pops wanted this. He didn't ask, because Pops claimed him, so Pops is _his _, and Ace is a thief. Thieves are _selfish _.

Ace meets that gaze, stubborn and proud, and Pops begins to cry.

This makes Ace falter. He wasn't expecting—he didn't think it was that bad—

But Pops is crying, and smiling, and the crew that are near him are all trying to hug him, all at once. Pops is crying, but even from here Ace can hear his booming laughter, and he's not the only one with tears in his eyes.

Ace grins back, not the wide wild grin of Kaitou Gold, but a pure, sincere smile that's all Ace. He steps forward off the boxes and lands beside Marco in a crouch. "Here," he says, dropping the stone in Marco's hand. "Don't let anyone give too much."

Marco accepts the gem without looking. He's still smiling, and he leans in, turning just a bit in to hide it from the crowd, and he says, "You really are your father's son, yoi. They'd both be so proud of you."

And suddenly it's Ace blinking away tears. It doesn't even hurt like he'd thought it might; Roger gave up his life from love, and that, at least, is something Ace can understand. But he's more than that, too; he knows know that giving up his own life to save someone else's is far more cruel than kind, and it was his family that taught him that—Marco, and Sabo, and Thatch and Haruta and Pops, and his division, and the Spades.

"Yeah," he says, but it's hoarse. "Yeah, thanks."

He steps down off the box into the crowd, and Masked Deuce is right there. "Captain," he says, and hauls Ace's arm over his shoulders to steady him.

"Not your—" he starts, but Masked Deuce is smiling, big and bright, and Ace stops trying to pull away. He lets his arm rest heavy across his former First Mate's shoulder and he says, "Yeah, okay."

"Yeah," Masked Deuce echoes. "C'mon, let's find you someplace quiet to sit."

Ace goes, letting Masked Deuce guide them, and he's deposited at a table in a corner; it's the one they use for gambling on watch, so it's tucked away. He blinks and looks up.

There's a circle of people around him, all talking casually and positioned in just the right way to keep him hidden from the main deck, and every last one of them is a former Spade Pirate. He catches Emmeline's eye and she grins at him, twisting her head to show off her earrings.

He laughs, and he gets up and goes over to talk to her. "Love your earrings," he says, and she grins at him.

"Thanks," she says, touching them. "My captain gave them to me for my birthday. He's a self-sacrificing idiot, and I'm pretty sure they're stolen, but they're my very favorite pair."

"At least he has good taste," Ace says, and she slaps his shoulder lightly. He catches her hand and smiles again. "I've missed you guys."

"We've always been right here," she says. "We'll always be right here."

"Even for a dumb, self-sacrificing captain?"

It's Deuce who answers, nudging Ace's shoulder with his own. "He's been getting better about that."

_"Ace!" _someone is hollering out in the crowd, and Ace stands up on his tiptoes and looks over the crowd. "Ace!" Haruta bellows, pushing through the crowd. "Get out of the way; I've got to kill me a kaitou. Ace! _Ace! _You _didn't tell me it was you! _"

Ace meets Emmeline's eyes because she's still standing in front of him and her grin is wide and vicious. "Go ahead," she says. "We'll stall the Commander."

Ace salutes them all, throws down a powder pellet, and vaults over the railing.

* * *

"That was a hell of a thing you did," Sabo says, and Ace looks up.

He's perched on his little strut on the back of the ship, and Sabo's sitting on the railing above him, looking out over the ocean.

"You think?" Ace asks, and looks out that way too.

"Yeah." And he stops, letting the silence fall between them. Ace squints upwards but can't tell if Sabo's fingers are tapping from all the way down here. Ace huffs and climbs the rope he'd left tied to the top rail; it was a giveaway but one he hadn't felt the need to hide. He grabs the rail and drags himself up beside Sabo, and then flops over it onto the deck proper. He sits down, back to the rail, and his head is just below where Sabo's sitting. "Hey," he says, and stops.

There's so much he wants to say, and even more that he should say, but he doesn't know where to start, not anymore. Sabo may be ten, the age when Ace knew him best, but Ace doesn't know this Sabo.

This Sabo, contrary to appearances, grew up. There's an entire lifetime between them, and Ace wants to bridge that gap but he doesn't know how.

"Sorry," he says, because he is. He's sorry for how he's been these past few days, and it seems like a safe place to start.

Sabo sighs, long and heavy, so it obviously wasn't. "Yeah," Sabo says, "me too." He swings around and slides off the rail to sit beside Ace. The sun is rising behind them, and when Sabo holds out a small, blood-red gem, it catches the light like a firework. "Here. Marco gave me this to give back to you."

"Thanks," Ace says, accepting it. What does he even do with it now? "You think I should just drop it in the sea?"

Sabo's quiet a second and then he says, "Nah. Magic things never seem to stay lost at sea."

This is true enough. Ace hums and tosses it up and down for a second. "What do you think we should do with it?"

Sabo twitches a bit at the "we" and Ace makes his decision. He catches the gem and wraps it hand around it, swallowing back the sudden rush of bile.

"I don't know what you should do with it," Sabo says, and he's not bitter, not sad—he's just quiet. Distant.

Ace holds it up to catch the sunlight. "You know, it really is pretty. Here," Ace says, and tosses the gem at Sabo.

Sabo grabs it out of the air, half turning to look at him. "What…?"

"Do something with it," Ace says, looking away. "And never tell me."

"But Ace—" Sabo says, voice breaking.

"I trust you," Ace says. "There's no one in the world I trust more than you."

"_Ace,_" Sabo says, voice cracking and deepening, and Ace glances back at him, smiling.

"Hey, Sabo," he says, and nudges a shoulder that's now at the same height as his own. "Good to have you back."

Sabo grew up well, he thinks. The scars are still noticeable, but there's the beginning of laugh lines around his eyes, and his hair isn't shorn short anymore. He looks good like this, Ace thinks, and is pleased to note that their eyes are once again level. "That's more like it," he says, absurdly pleased.

"Wh—" Sabo says, fist clenching on Pandora. "That's—it was a _decade._" Ace makes an agreeable hum, and Sabo says, "Ace, _why?_"

Ace smiles, small, and nudges their shoulders together again. "What's a decade here or there in the face of family?"


	8. epilogue

"Are you really reading that right now?" Marco asks. "Right now, yoi."

"Why not?" Ace asks over the newspaper, grinning insouciantly. The headline right under his grin reads _MYSTERIOUS FIRES ROUT CONSPIRACY! _

"Because we're on in three," Sabo says across the comm line. "C'mon, Ace; it'll still be there tomorrow."

"Yeah, yeah," Ace says, and crumples the paper up into one fist and makes it vanish. "Marco? You ready?"

"Everyone's ready but you, Ace," Sabo says. "Positions; we're in countdown."

Ace grins, tugging his hood up, and steps up to stand on the very edge of the roof. He looks south, into the darkness, where half a city away Sabo is standing on another roof, dressed just the same. "I always wanted to do a teleportation trick," he says, sliding palms over his slacks and letting his grin spread.

"They'll never catch us," Sabo promises, and Marco starts a five count on his fingers, stepping over to the spotlight.

_Three-two-one! _Ace tracks and he's perfectly still and poised when the light hits him, reflecting off the cape's lining like a beacon.

Ace spreads his arms wide, grins through the adrenalin, and says, "_Showtime!" _


End file.
